t 



God Winning Us 




m * 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

Chap.±:/J Copyright No 

Shelf_.l4i_s5 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



God Winning Us 

BY / 

REV. CLARENCE LATHBURY. 



WITH A PREFATORY VERSE 

BY 

MAKY A. LATHBURY. 



11 To the withered traditional church, yielding dry catechisms, he 
(Swedenborg) let in nature again, and the worshipper, escaping from 
the vestry oi verbs and texts, is surprised to find himself a party to 
the whole of his religion. His religion thinks for him, and is of 
universal application. * * * Instead of a religion which visited 
him diplomatically three or four times — when he was born, when he 
married, when he fell sick, and when he died, and for the rest 
never interfered with him — here was a teaching which accompanied 
him all day, accompanied him even into sleep and dreams. * * * 
He elected goodness as the clue to which the soul must cling in all 
this labyrinth of nature. * * * Nothing can keep you— not fate, 
nor health, nor admirable intellect ; none can keep you, but recti- 
tude only, rectitude forever and ever. And with a tenacity which 
never swerved * * * he adheres to this brave choice." 

—Jt. W. Emerson. 



THE SWEDENBORG PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION, 

GERMANTOWN, PA. 

1898. 



V 



\ 



f> l \ 



18880 



Copyright 

By THE SWEDENBORG PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION, 

1898. 










1898 



WM. F. FELL & CO., 

ELECTROTYPER3 AND PRINTER! 

PHILADELPHIA. 



£nd COPY, 
188a 



PREFATORY VERSE. 



Through the long levels of the land 
Life leads two pilgrims by the hand. 

And ever as they walk the eyes of one 

Turn backward to the setting of the sun. 
The other eastward, toward the hills of dawn, 

Urges the steps of Life, 

Who, steadfast in the strife, 
Though ever eastward, ever westward drawn, 

Binds each to each with bands 

(Her soft, insistent hands) ; 
Kecalls them to the bird-songs near and sweet ; 
The plants of use and beauty springing round their 
feet. 

Life leans and listens to the tale, thrice told, 
The creed, the song, the legend of the Old ; 
But toward the east, the sunrise, and the dew, 
Her heart leaps forward with the radiant New. 

Maey A. Lathbuey. 
August 25, 1898. 



"*•% 




CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. — Emanuel Swedenborg, 1 

II.— God, 15 

III.— Man, 30 

IV.— The Bible, 42 

V.— This World, 56 

VI.— The Other World, 69 

VII. — God Accommodating Himself to Us (In- 
carnation), 85 

VIII.— God Winning Us (Atonement), 98 

IX.— God Opening Our Eyes (Faith), .... Ill 

X.— God Growing In Us (Regeneration), . . 122 

XI.— God Acting Through Us (Religion), . . 134 

XII.— God Caring For Us (Providence), ... 147 



-~s~»^«" 



GOD WINNING US. 



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God Winning Us. 



i. 

EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. 

Preliminary to some simple unfolding of 
New Church truth, it seems expedient to say a 
word about its teacher. All great movements 
turn on men. Every reformation, every great 
system of religious doctrine, every new school 
of education, science, or philosophy has had a 
leader who has crystallized that system and em- 
bodied it in his personality. Pestalozzi and 
Froebel stand for the New Education, Darwin 
and Huxley and Tyndal for the New Science, 
Hegel and Kant for the New Philosophy, and 
Swedenborg not alone for the New Theol- 
ogy, but for the entire system of new thought 
that is breaking on this age. He stands for 
the New Age, which is the New Church. 

Emanuel Swedenborg was born in Stock- 
1 1 



2 God Winning Us. 

holm, Sweden, in 1688, and died in London in 
1772, having lived on this planet eighty-four 
years. We think of Sweden as an obscure 
country, but a little reading will compel us to 
change our minds. Sweden has ever been the 
land of lofty ideas, of brave and magnanimous 
actions. It is the mother of the great Scandi- 
navian race. It is the land of Odin, and of 
the descendants of Odin. It gave birth to 
Gustavus Vasa, who awoke his country from 
serfdom; to Gustavus Adolphus, famed for 
dazzling achievements, who burst over Catholic 
Europe like a thunder-cloud transfigured by 
lightning. It is the land of the ancestral poets 
of Europe, the precursors of Shakespeare and 
Tennyson. Linnseus, the greatest of naturalists, 
was born there. Frederika Bremer, the charm- 
ing writer, and Jenny Lind, the Swedish Night- 
ingale, are her daughters. It is the soil of 
genius, beautiful and affluent in the gifts of 
nature. 

Swedenborg sprung from illustrious ancestry. 
His father was Doctor Jasper Swedberg, Bishop 
of Skara. His mother was of the nobility. 
His sister married Benzelius, the Archbishop 
of Upsala. Swedenborg was himself a noble- 
man, and sat in the Swedish House of Lords. 



Emanuel Swedenborg. 3 

The family was intimate at the court of Charles 
XII, the most illustrious of Sweden's reigning 
monarchs. 

Swedenborg's childhood is described as re- 
markable for its purity, fidelity, and scholarship. 
He was a brilliant student from his earliest 
years. Precocity usually pauses at maturity, 
but Swedenborg's growth of mind continued to 
extreme old age with unabated vigor. He grew 
up in an atmosphere of culture, piety, and eru- 
dition. 

He was so many-sided that it is difficult to 
speak of him in a single chapter. Emerson 
says : " He seemed by the variety and vastness 
of his powers to be the composition of several 
persons, like giant fruits, which are matured in 
gardens by the union of four or five single 
blossoms." Mill, the noted English economist, 
says : " Measure him as a man of science with 
Newton, and you will find him his equal in 
point of intellectual greatness ; with Bacon and 
Plato, and he is great among the greatest of 
philosophers ; with Boerhaven and Halle, he is 
in the first rank of physiologists; with theologi- 
cal writers and commentators, from Origen to 
Adam Clarke, and who has equaled him?" 

Up to fifty-four years of age he was one of 



4 God Winning Us. 

the most remarkable of scientists. He was 
Assessor of Mines under Charles XII, a mili- 
tary engineer of stupendous ability, a great and 
constant traveler ; journeying over England, Hol- 
land, France, and Germany, when traveling was 
much more laborious work than now. His mind 
was intensely active; to mention his scientific 
books is to almost catalogue a library. He 
wrote on such a variety of subjects as decimal 
money, finding the longitude at sea by the 
moon; on docks, sluices, salt-works, mathemati- 
cal and practical themes. He wrote on algebra 
and chemistry; on dykes, minerals, iron and 
stalactites, and on the rise and fall of Swedish 
currency. He performed a notable feat of en- 
gineering at the siege of Friedrichthal by haul- 
ing two galleys, five boats, and a sloop some 
fourteen English miles overland for the royal 
service. In his "Principia" he may be regarded 
as taking his place beside Newton, Kepler, and 
Humboldt, climbing to the high places and 
mountain-tops of nature, and overlooking the 
universe. 

He anticipated much of the science of the 
nineteenth century. In astronomy he antici- 
pated the discovery of the seventh planet (Ura- 
nus), and wrote about it forty years before it 



Emanuel Swedenborg. 5 

was discovered by Herschel. He first described 
the offices of the lungs. He discovered the ex- 
istence of a passage between the right and left 
lobes of the brain. He outlined the majestic 
doctrine of evolution that has taken possession 
of the intellectual world, and is now accepted 
by scholars of rank in all nations and all 
schools. The discovery of this doctrine had 
long been attributed to the noted philosopher 
Emanuel Kant, but it is now known that Swe- 
denborg recorded it in his "Principia" when 
Kant was but ten years old. The scientists have 
had to yield the honor to Swedenborg. He dis- 
covered what is called the nebular theory in 
astronomy, — that is, that the sun was once nebu- 
lous like a cloud. 

Swedenborg is the father of the New Educa- 
tion, the unfolding of which is recognized by all 
progressive teachers, and is swiftly taking pos- 
session of the schools and universities of the 
earth. Pestalozzi and Froebel are the names 
we hear most often associated with the New 
Education, but its principles are all found in 
the germinant state in Swedenborg's doctrine 
of remains. His teaching on this subject ante- 
dated that of either Pestalozzi or Froebel. 
Pestalozzi got it from Swedenborg, and Froe- 



6 God Winning Us. 

bel from Pestalozzi. The great kindergarten 
movement in education that has captured the 
intellectual world belongs to the New Church. 
These three things — evolution of worlds out 
of the sun, evolution of education by un- 
folding, evolution in religion by development 
of the religious life — belong to the New 
Church. Swedenborg discovered the atomic 
theory of the material universe — that every- 
thing is made up of atoms, from the ethers 
down to the central fires of the planet — which is 
now conceded by every valid scientist. He 
gave fifty-four years to the study of science; 
and had he done nothing else^ this would have 
immortalized him. 

In literature he was prolific. His treatises 
number in all one hundred and fifty. Emerson 
says: "He was one of the missouriums and 
mastodons of literature, not to be measured by 
whole colleges of ordinary scholars. His stal- 
wart presence would flutter the gowns of a uni- 
versity. * * * His ' Economy of the Animal 
Kingdom ' is one of the books which, for sus- 
tained dignity of thinking, is an honor to the 
human race. * * * Nothing can exceed the 
bold and brilliant treatment of a subject usu- 
ally so dry and uninteresting. * * * The moral 



Emanuel Swedenborg. 7 

insight of Swedenborg, the correction of popu- 
lar errors, the announcement of ethical laws, 
take him out of comparison with any modern 
writer and entitle him to a place, vacant for 
some ages, among the lawgivers of mankind. 
* * * He delivers golden sayings which express 
with singular beauty the ethical laws, as when he 
uttered those famed sentences that ( In heaven 
the angels are advancing continually to the 
springtime of their youth, so that the oldest 
angel appears to be the youngest ;' 'The more 
angels, the more room ; ' i Man in his perfect 
form is heaven ; ' ' The perfection of man is the 
love of use/ " Of his book entitled "Conjugial 
Love " he says : " It came near to be the Hymn 
of Love which Plato attempted in his Banquet 
— the love which Dante says Casella sang 
among the angels in Paradise." George Daw- 
son, the distinguished English prelate, says: 
" If I were to be shut up in prison three years, 
Swedenborg's books would be my choice; and 
at the end of three years it would be six more 
before I should find them dry and uninterest- 
ing." 

Up to the age of fifty-four, Swedenborg gave 
himself exclusively to science. There he sud- 
denly dropped science and took up theology. 



8 God Winning Us. 

For thirty years thereafter he studied the Bible, 
opened his eyes and ears to celestial revelations, 
and wrote his remarkable books that are each 
decade shining on the spirits of men with greater 
radiance. He threw himself into theology as 
energetically as he had thrown himself into 
science. He resigned his office under Charles 
XII, but the salary attached to it continued to 
be paid to him until his death. From this time 
onward he appears before the world as a saint 
and a seer. His scientific creations are already 
eclipsed by his theological creations. His un- 
folding of Scripture, his superb system of truth 
and love, his descriptions of the future life, will 
charm and inspire the world so long as time 
shall last. His eschatology is being accepted 
by all religious faiths. Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning says : "To my mind the only light 
that has been cast on the other life is found 
in Swedenborg's philosophy. It explains much 
that is incomprehensible." In speaking of 
"Foregleams of Immortality," by E. H. Sears, 
she says : " The writer is wise from Sweden- 
borg. I can scarcely conceive of his writings 
not impressing many and deeply. I have lent 
the book and recommended it in England. It 
is a beautiful and pungent treatise." 



Emanuel Swedenborg. 9 

Swedenborg says about the time he began 
to write his religious books his eyes were 
opened to the unseen universe. He lived for 
twenty-seven years in both worlds at the same 
time. This has been a stumbling block to many 
who would like to accept him as a teacher, and 
it has induced many to pronounce him vision- 
ary. But Emerson says : " This man, who ap- 
peared to his contemporaries as a visionary and 
an elixir of moonbeams, no doubt led the most 
real life of any man then in the world. And 
now when the royal and ducal Fredericks, 
Cristierns, and Brunswicks of that day have 
slid into oblivion, he begins to spread himself 
into the minds of thousands/' The accusation 
of being visionary might with equal reasonable- 
ness be charged to the wizard Edison ; to the 
photographer who can take two hundred pic- 
tures a second and photograph the bones in the 
body; to Paul, who says he saw Jesus after 
his crucifixion on the Damascus Road ; to John, 
who says he saw the heaveu opened while on 
the island of Patmos; to our continually de- 
parting friends who converse easily with those 
who have gone over the borderland. We ought 
not to deny anything in this age until we have 
thoroughly investigated. The skies are full of 



10 Ood Winning Us. 

wonders waiting to break on the soul. Much 
stress has been laid upon this department of his 
disclosure; an overemphasis has been placed 
upon it. Few realize that he considered it no 
part of his theological system. It was an indi- 
vidual experience — a part of his education. He 
asked no one to accept it. The New Church 
asks no one to accept it. Few who study his 
eschatology can doubt it; yet it is not an article 
of the creed of the New Church. 

Swedenborg restored to the church the lost 
science of correspondences, — that everything 
in nature is the shrine of some truth ; that the 
universe is a great kindergarten for the instruc- 
tion of the Lord's children in the principles of 
truth and love. Swedenborg restored the Bible 
to the church. He showed that there is an inner 
sense, a truth that lies within the outward nar- 
rative, like a jewel in its case. He has taught 
us how to read deeply between the lines. He 
illuminates the Old Testament tales of blood- 
shed and the horrors of war, and from out their 
uninviting exterior beams the beauties of truth 
and love. He makes the prophesies intelligible 
and fascinating. He has unlocked the Book 
of Revelation, a before lurid and lovely 
enigma. It is like the discovery of diamonds 



Emanuel Swedenborg. 11 

in smoking craters, or gold beneath the barren 
hills. 

Swedenborg set Christ before men as the 
Almighty God. There is no teacher who adores 
and enthrones Christ as he does. Others have 
spoken of his divinity; he speaks of his deity. 
He lifts the Bible and Jesus to an eminence be- 
fore unknown. In view of this fact, it seems 
strange to hear people denying that the New 
Church believes either in Christ or the Bible. 

Swedenborg made no attempt to establish a 
sect. He regarded his revelations as universal. 
They were not to be confined within any human 
lines of demarcation. He wrote his books and 
placed them in the libraries of the world. In 
his opinion the New Church was to pervade all 
religious and secular organization, remolding 
and rejuvenating them. This is the idea of his 
followers. They do not confine the New Church 
to the small organization bearing that name. 
They have never sought to erect a vast mechan- 
ism of truth, but rather they have endeavored 
to send the truth to the remotest corners of so- 
ciety. In the true sense, the New Church is the 
mightiest of religious organizations. It is the in- 
visible body of the good and the true everywhere. 
The New Education, the New Philosophy, the 



12 God Winning Us. 

New Science, the New Theology is the New 
Church. Swedenborg never intended to make 
his name known to the world. He did not put 
his name in his books until forced to it by pub- 
licity. He was the most humble and unselfish 
of men. Emerson says: "Swedenborg styles 
himself, in the title-pages of his books, Servant 
of the Lord Jesus Christ, and by force of intel- 
lect, and in effect, he is the last father in the 
church, and is not likely to have a successor. 
* * * To the withered traditional church yield- 
ing dry catechisms he let in nature again, and 
the worshiper, escaping from the vestry of 
verbs and texts, is surprised to find himself a 
party to the whole of his religion. * * * In- 
stead of a religion that visited him diplomati- 
cally three or four times in his life — when he 
was born, when he was married, when he fell 
sick, and when he died — and for the rest never 
meddled with him, here was a religion that ac- 
companied him all day, even into his sleep and 
dreams. * * * He elected goodness as the clew 
to which the soul must cling in all the labyrinth 
of nature * * * nothing can keep you but rec- 
titude * * * only rectitude forever and for- 
ever." 

Here follow a few independent witnesses to 



Emanuel Swedenborg. 13 

the greatness of the character we contemplate: 
"A colossal soul, he lies vast and broad upon 
his times, and requires a long focal distance to be 
seen " (Emerson). Thomas Carlyle, the eminent 
historian and essayist, says : "A man of great 
and indisputable cultivation, strong mathe- 
matical intellect, and the most pious, seraphic 
turn of mind; a man beautiful and lovable and 
tragical to me, with many thoughts in him, 
which, when I interpret them for myself, I find 
to belong to the high and perennial in human 
thought." 

Bishop Randolph S. Foster, the senior bishop 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and her 
most eminent pulpit orator, says : " Men that 
see farther and think deeper than the average 
herd do not always escape obloquy, but they do 
not easily die. Emanuel Swedenborg will live 
in the souls of men long after his shallow tra- 
ducers have sunk into oblivion." Phillips 
Brooks says, in a personal letter to the author : 
" I have the profoundest honor for the charac- 
ter and work of Emanuel Swedenborg, and 
while I have not been a special student in his 
writings I have from time to time gained much 
from them. It is impossible to say a little on 
so great a theme." James Freeman Clarke 



14 God Winning Us. 

says: " Emanuel Swedenborg became the organ 
of a new spiritual philosophy the power of 
which is hardly yet understood, but which seems 
likely to leaven all religious thought and change 
all arbitrary theologies into a spiritual rational- 
ism. Swedenborg did not go out of Christianity 
to find it; like George Fox and John Wesley, 
he found it in Christ." Edward Everett Hale 
says : " Swedenborgianism has done the liberat- 
ing work of the last century. The wave Swe- 
denborg started lasts to this day. The state- 
ments of Swedenborg's religious works have 
revolutionized theology." 



II. 

GOD. 

Few persons realize how important it is to 
have a correct idea of God. Our attitude to 
God depends entirely upon what we think of 
him. Some persons hate God and fear him sim- 
ply because he has been misrepresented to them. 
If we have no personal acquaintance with some 
one, we depend upon what others say of him. 
We measure him entirely by hearsay. If we 
are told that he is hard and cold and ungener- 
ous, we think of him thus, and draw such a 
mental picture of him. He may be grossly mis- 
represented. He may be a beautiful character, 
but we think of him according to what we have 
heard about him. We shun him, we want 
nothing to do with him, for we understand that 
he is not worthy of our confidence. If he is 
introduced, we treat him coldly. We have in 
mind the false picture of him drawn by an 
enemy. And so quite frequently persons who 
are actually congenial, and might be fast friends, 
are deprived of a rich companionship, and sep- 
15 



16 God Winning Us. 

arated by their idea of one another. At last, 
perhaps, something brings them to a closer ac- 
quaintance, and the result is a deep intimacy 
that is never broken. 

So exactly it is with the Great Person — the 
Lord. If we are afraid of him ; if we do not 
love him ; if we do not feel as much at home 
with him as with our mother, husband, wife, 
children, it is because we have a wrong idea of 
him. Many know God only by hearsay, — what 
the ministers and deacons and religious people 
in general have said about him. And these do 
not agree. Some say one thing and some 
another. There have been many untrue things 
said about him, quite frequently by those who 
have themselves meant to be honest. Many 
have, with a breaking heart, uttered things they 
have supposed to be true because the church has 
taught them, and the Bible has seemed to them 
to teach them. They have misunderstood his 
character and have unwittingly misreported 
him. Their pictures of him have frightened 
us and caused us to instinctively withdraw from 
his presence. Love for such a character has 
been impossible. Peace and a childlike, home- 
like feeling in his presence have been impossible. 

If a true picture were drawn, it would be so 



Ood. 17 

beautiful, so evidently loving and compassionate 
that we should turn to him eagerly, however 
bad we might be. If a true idea of him were con- 
veyed, it would cause him to appear more lovely 
than the dearest friend we have ever known. 

God is, first of all, a person. I was talking 
not long ago with a lady of great intelligence, 
who was at the same time very aged. The 
subject was the personality of God. She said 
she thought of God as a mist or cloud floating 
about the universe, blown hither and thither 
by the winds. She could not clothe him in 
human form. She could not think of him as 
being real as her father. What a terrible idea 
this ! And this woman was a beautiful charac- 
ter and had been reared in a Christian commu- 
nity. She had attended a Christian church for 
four-score years. Think of praying to a cloud. 
Think of a cloud governing the universe and 
guiding the race. Gaze at the fleeciest cloud 
that lies against the cerulean blue and see if you 
can feel any affinity with it. See if you can 
warm up to it. 

A minister of the gospel told me that he 

could not think of God as a person. He thought 

of him as scattered about in the flower, the rocks, 

and the sky. When he prayed, he prayed into 

2 



18 God Winning Us. 

space. How pathetic is this ! When our hearts 
hunger for love, shall we go to the flowers? Shall 
we seek the cold and rugged hills where God 
lies buried ? Shall we cry to the stars that glit- 
ter through infinite space ? They are beautiful, 
but they can not satisfy, for they are not God. 
We want a God upon whose bosom we can, like 
John, place our aching head. We want a warm, 
loving, living, palpitating personality. We want 
one into whose ears we can pour our sorrows 
and be sure of comfort. If God is our father, 
is he not an actual person ? Shall we not be- 
hold him as actually as we shall our departed 
friends? Shall we not gaze upon the face, the 
hands, the figure of God ? Shall we not hear 
his voice? Can God create the dear children, 
the affectionate mother, the sublime statesman, 
and he himself be nothing more than an essence, 
or a gas, or a cloud ? 

Recall the noblest person you have ever met 
— the most loving, the wisest, the sweetest, 
the strongest, the most beautiful — and mul- 
tiply that person by infinity, and you have 
God. God is in nature just as our friends 
are in their creations. Our friend makes a 
picture, a statue, a book, and we say, " This is 
just like him." We see him in every line, every 



God. 19 

curve, every tint, every sentence. We read a 
paragraph, and we say, " That sounds just like 
Emerson." We hear a voice in another room, 
and we say, "That voice I know." We gaze on 
that matchless bridge that spans the East River^ 
and we see Roebling. We read (< Trilby " and 
feel the thrill of Du Maurier. Our friend is in 
the embroidered handkerchief bestowed upon us 
as a sacred memento. The faded roses twenty 
years old touch our hearts and cause the tears to 
flow. We see a beloved face in them, crisp and 
odorless and unbeautiful as they are. Back of 
the East River Bridge is a personality. Behind 
the voice in the next room is a form. The pict- 
ure, the statue, the book, the faded roses speak 
of a form and voice invisible, yet actual. 

And back of nature is a personal Lord. Be- 
hind the violet gazing through its winsome eyes 
is a personal God. The things of nature are 
not him ; they are his creations. They are re- 
minders of him. They tell us that he is. I am 
told by some that they never expect to see God 
in heaven. He will be in everything there as 
here, but himself invisible, intangible. He will 
be ever in the distance, like the mirage of the 
desert. Ever sought, never realized. If we 
expect to see our friends in heaven, why not 



20 God Winning Us. 

God? God came to earth, was born, lived, suf- 
fered, rejoiced, died and rose again, just like 
everybody else. He ate, drank, slept, awaked. 
Men saw him, took his hand, kissed him, felt 
his love. They saw and handled him on earth, 
why not in heaven? Did he not say, "If I 
go, I will return again and receive you unto 
myself, that where I am there ye may be also?'' 
When Philip asked to see God, did he not 
say, " Have I been so long a time with you, and 
hast thou not known me, Philip? " " He that 
hath seen me hath seen the Father." We shall 
see God in heaven as actually as we shall see 
our friends. 

There is a trinity in God, but he is not a 
trinity of persons. There are not three Gods; 
there is only one God. There are three mani- 
festations of God, but not three Gods. Our 
heavenly Father can not be three individuals 
any more than our earthly father can be three. 
We are told. that we are created in the likeness 
and image of God. An image of Webster, if 
it is a true one, looks like Webster. A photo- 
graph of a friend, if it be true, is a correct re- 
production of the friend. And so man, the 
image and likeness of God, looks like him. 

There are three things in man that compose 



God. 21 

his being, — his body, his spirit, and his personal- 
ity, or the influence streaming out from him. 
This is the trinity, or three things, in man. This 
is the trinity in God : His body that men gazed 
upon and handled, his soul that inhabited it, and 
his spirit that streamed out from it and touched 
men. We speak of the influence of certain per- 
sons. We speak of the influence of Phillips 
Brooks, of Lincoln, of noble persons in the com- 
munity, and by that we refer to an influence 
going out from them and affecting others. We 
call it personality. People have, we say, a good 
or bad influence, much or little influence. The 
influence of the Lord is called the Holy Influ- 
ence or Holy Spirit. This is the trinity, or 
three things, of God, — his body, his spirit, and 
his influence. God in the flesh, God in the 
spirit, and God in the influence streaming out 
from him into the hearts of men. 

Then there is what is called in technical lan- 
guage the "immanence of God," which simply 
means the constant presence of God in the world. 
God is not away off in the sky ; he is here. We 
can not see him now, for he is not now in the 
flesh ; but when he was living in one of these 
fleshly bodies, men saw him. We are all spirits 
tenanting fleshly bodies. AVe do not see the spir- 



22 Ood Winning Us. 

itual form ; we see only the tenement in which 
the spirit lives. The spirit gazes through fleshly 
eyes and utters itself through fleshly lips. We 
shall not see the spiritual form of our friends (or 
of God) until we enter the spiritual land and 
cast off the mask of the flesh. Therefore, when 
our friends forsake the fleshly body the empty 
tenement is put out of sight, and we see them 
no more for a while. When we go to them and 
again assume their plane of life, we shall see 
them as of old. Then spirit shall see and han- 
dle spirit, as here body sees and handles body. 
This is exactly why we do not see God. It is 
for the identical reason that we do not see our 
vanished friends. We now see only those who 
are in the flesh. God has passed out of the 
flesh, as everybody does at the closing of the 
earthly life. 

It is a startling yet true thought that we 
have actually never seen each other, and will 
see each other for the first time in the spir- 
itual world. We are as truly spirits as God is, 
and just as invisible. We take each other by 
the hand, and kiss earthly lips, and gaze into 
earthly eyes, but they are not us. We are 
within, hidden, intangible. We are behind 
these, behind the outward act and the outward 



God. 23 

voice. We are looking through the windows 
of the eyes on each other. We can simulate 
and hide our actual selves, and pretend to be 
what we are not. But though God no longer 
inhabits a fleshly body, and comes less near to 
us in this particular manner; though we can not 
realize him in the outward way that was vouch- 
safed to Peter and John and Mary, he is out- 
wardly visible in other ways. He is here in 
nature. He is here in our friends. He reveals 
himself in Godlike lives. How is the father in 
the son ? We say, " That boy is the copy of his 
father; his looks, his speech, his manners, his 
disposition is a duplicate of his father's." We 
smile to see the miniature of the mother in the 
little daughter. We exclaim, " She is her mother 
over again." The parent is reflected almost 
perfectly in her. 

So God dwells in his people. When we see 
a lovely character, we see God written small. 
When we see love, truth, tenderness, justice 
beauty personified, we see that much of God 
personified. When we see humility in the prim- 
rose, modesty in the violet, purity in the lily, 
sublimity in the mountain, we see God in them. 
Thus we see God in all things and on all sides. 
Yet we must keep the individuality of God dis- 



24 God Whining Vs. 

tinct. Back of the boy is his father's personal- 
ity ; back of God in our friends, in nature, is 
the sublime Person. Behind the unshakable 
mountain is the Eternal God. Behind the 
humble violet is the humble God. 

How can God be in all things at the same 
instant? How can he be in every person, every 
star, every shrub, every landscape at the same 
instant? It is easy to answer, though it has 
puzzled many. How is the sun in all things at 
the same instant? The sun is in Boston, 
St. Louis, and San Francisco at once. It shines 
on the Governor of Massachusetts and on the 
leper of Hawaii at the same instant. It shines on 
eight planets and streams away into fathomless 
space. Mercury and Uranus bask at the same 
instant in its rays. How is it that a great man's 
influence is in all the hearts of a nation at the 
same instant? The nation wept about the bed- 
side of the expiring Garfield. Lincoln is in the 
hearts of his countrymen. The orator is pour- 
ing himself into each mind in his audience at 
the same instant. It is no more difficult for him 
to touch five thousand than five hundred. How 
is it that certain great and noble characters mold 
the lives of millions through centuries? This 
explains how the Lord can be in everything at 



God. 25 

once. The spirit is not hampered by space or 
time. It takes time to get our bodies to Chi- 
cago, but we can go there in an instant. We 
can think ourselves into the sun as quickly as 
into the next room. Nearness has no relation 
to miles or feet. Our child in London is nearer 
than the stranger's child across the street. Our 
friend happens upon us while we are in medita- 
tion. He sees us smile, he sees the lights and 
shadows chase each other over our faces, he 
arouses us, and we tell him we were living over 
an incident that occurred forty years ago. The 
spirit can soar into the future or drop into the 
abysses of the past. It can travel to the most 
distant stars, and time and space have no limit- 
ing power over it. All these wonderful inven- 
tions for annihilating space are prophetic of the 
day when space shall be a forgotten factor. The 
telegraph and the swift express predict a time 
when we shall journey whither we wish without 
any hindrances. 

God is love — and only love. He never pun- 
ishes, never hates, never casts off. He is never 
partial. The loftiest type of earthly love is but 
the faint reflection of the love of God. Select 
the person you hold in highest esteem, in whose 
hands you would place, without a thought, your 



26 Ood Winning Us. 

life and fortunes, — your wife, your husband, 
your mother, your child, — and that love is but 
a spark struck off in the darkness, as compared 
with the love of God. We ought to be the 
least afraid of God of anybody in the wide uni- 
verse. Many would rather trust their fortunes 
with some earthly friend than with God. This 
is because they do not know him. Many would 
not fear death if their mothers had the settling 
of their destinies. But the wisdom and love 
of God transcends theirs, as the light of the sun 
transcends the light of the tallow candle. 

The ultimate fear should pass away when we 
think of God. If he seem austere, cold, distant, 
it is because we do not know him. If our mothers 
would follow us to the gallows, God will follow 
us to hell, if we persist in going there. " Though 
I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there." 
There are no hells but those we ourselves con- 
struct. God has not made them, and would 
fain obliterate them. The drunkard, the thief, 
the renegade is in hell, and God wants him to 
come out. Every bad person is in hell, and 
God weeps over him. No one goes to hell 
unless he wishes to go. The gates of mercy 
will never be closed to any one. As the father 
ran to meet his returning son, and kissed those 



God. 27 

lips polluted by the kiss of harlots, stripped off 
his rags, arrayed him in a new garment, placed 
a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet, and 
set him at the right hand at the feast — thus 
the Heavenly Father will welcome any returning 
child. The gates of heaven will ever be flung 
wide open, and God watching for the home- 
coming of his loved and absent. 

Why did God come to earth in the flesh ? 
We shall find a perfect illustration of God in 
his life in the flesh. He came in nature, but 
this did not satisfy us. It was not a close 
enough approach. God in our friends is not 
just what we crave. We want to see him per- 
sonally. It is not enough for us to see our 
loved ones in their books, their pictures, the 
tokens of affection they have sent us — we want 
to see them personally. It is not enough for 
the wife to see her husband in her son — she will 
never be satisfied until she sees him personally. 
Therefore the Lord came nearest to us and sat- 
isfied us most when he came himself. He sent 
his prophets, he sent his book, he sent loving 
friends to exhibit his love — but he could only 
touch us vitally by coming himself. He saw 
that we misunderstood him, that no person or 



28 God Winning Us. 

book could accurately interpret him — therefore 
he came himself. 

People may get an idea of us through our 
letters, our books, our friends, our works — 
but if they wish to truly know us they must 
meet us in person. Therefore the Lord came 
in person. He stooped to us and became 
one of us that we might know him. If we 
wish to show a little child our hearts we must 
become little children oursel ves. If we are lofty 
and formal in our manners we can not draw near 
to them. If we wish to lead a Central African 
to civilization we must go to him and stoop to 
his crude life. We must live in his hut, eat 
his food, and learn his language. Sending letters 
or ambassadors will not be effectual. If we 
would win them we must cast in our lot with 
theirs. This is the way the teacher leads the 
child from the kindergarten to the university. 
He descends from his Greek and geology and 
trigonometry to the alphabet, and begins again 
with the child. This is precisely what God did. 
He met men on their simple planes of life. He 
was poorer than the poorest, he was homeless, 
his clothes were contributed, he suffered as no 
one ever did, his enemies were many, he died 



God. 29 

the most cruel of deaths. He did this in order 
that he might win us. He did this that we 
might realize that he is capable of understand- 
ing us. 

If God had not passed through our ex- 
periences it would be impossible for us to feel 
that he is able to understand us. No person can 
understand us who has not had our individual 
trials. Now, this tender, sublime Human 
Being, who became the companion of fisher- 
men, who conversed with the miserable woman 
at the well of Samaria, who permitted harlots 
to bathe his feet with tears, who wept with the 
sisters of Lazarus at the grave of their buried 
hopes, who expired on the cross amid darkness 
and earthquake, surrounded by his enemies — 
this Human Being was the God of heaven and 
earth. He was God, who said as he ascended, 
"All power is given unto me in heaven and in 
earth." If we wish to get a true idea of God 
we must study him in the gospels, for there we 
shall find God adapted to our comprehension. 



III. 

MAN. 

We approach these great and interesting ques- 
tions — Who am I ? From whence have I come ? 
Whither am I bound ? It is not until we have 
been on this planet a number of years that we 
begin to make these inquiries. We are born 
little, helpless, thoughtless things. If we could 
make a flower spring suddenly out of the earth, 
the very young child would not deem it strange 
or unusual. It does not think. It flies along 
on the express train without surprise. It does 
not stop to think how it travels so fast — it is 
not even aware that it is traveling swiftly. If 
the child were to journey from New York to 
Chicago in an hour it would express no feelings 
of surprise. It is a little, impulsive, unthinking 
being. But after a while it begins to look 
about, take cognizance of its relations, and make 
inquiries. It becomes a little interrogation 
point. It asks very many questions that stagger 
us. A five-year-old maiden met me one day 
on the street, and asked abruptly — " Who made 
30 



Man. 31 

God?" "What is the world made out of?" 
The child is first interested in the things about 
it that it can see and handle. As it grows 
older it becomes interested in its own mind 
and heart, and finally asks these great ques- 
tions — Who am I? From whence have I 
come ? Whither am I bound ? 

What is man ? He is a child of God, and 
God is his father. This may be said in a real- 
istic sense, in a sense entirely free from theo- 
logical technicalities or religious vagaries. We 
are the children of God and of the family of 
God. Our earthly father is not our actual 
father — our actual father is God. We do not 
belong to earth, we belong to heaven. We are 
not going to remain here long, we are going to 
heaven. We are related to God by the closest 
ties. We are related to him by blood and 
every natural affection. We are princes of 
heaven. The Psalmist says that we are 
"created a little lower than God." The 
scholars of the sixteenth century did not dare 
to soar so high, and wrongly translated " a 
little lower than the angels" 

We do not fear now to claim a position next 
to God in his matchless creation. We do not 
fear to emphasize the truth that God is human. 



32 God Winning Us. 

We can not put too great emphasis on this great 
and lustrous declaration. It does not bring God 
down to man, it lifts man up to God. We are 
human because we have descended from God. 
We never speak of an animal or a tree as being 
human. It is our relationship to God that 
makes us human. But we are human only so 
far as we are like God. When we are like the 
beast we are called beastly. When we think of 
some one as inhuman, we think of him as de- 
graded and not at all like God. God is the 
Great Human, the Divine Human — we are the 
little human, the finite human. He is the Per- 
fect Human, we are the imperfect human. 

We are told that we are fashioned in the 
" likeness and image of God." If Hiram 
Powers were to carve a marble image of some 
one, it would resemble that some one and reflect 
the glory of the sculptor. In the Agassiz 
Museum is a bust of Agassiz. It is said to be 
a perfect representation of Agassiz. If it is not, 
the fault is with the sculptor, the workmanship 
is defective. But when the Great Sculptor 
makes an image of himself it is true to life. 
When God makes man, man looks like God. 
It is a truer reproduction of God than anything 
man can make. God is a more skilful work- 



Man 33 

man than Hiram Powers or Horatio Greenough. 
I dwell on this thrilling fact that we may- 
realize what we actually are, and thus be 
enabled to make a correct estimate of our great- 
ness. If we can realize that we are the noblest 
creation in the universe, nothing less than a 
reproduction of God, how we shall be elevated 
in our own esteem ! We will be likely to treat 
ourselves with dignity, we will not be likely to 
drug the matchless temples of the spirit with 
tobaccos and whiskies or shock them with lust. 
Not man in ruin, not man dirty and ignorant 
and blasphemous, is the man God created in his 
image. When we gaze at the drunkard, the 
harlot, the debauchee, we do not see the image 
of God — we see a ruin. There is a vast differ- 
ence in Westminster Abbey as it now stands in 
its unique glory, the pride of England, and 
that same Abbey in ruin, with pillars and 
architraves and minarets in the dust, the weeds 
and ivy creeping over them, the haunt of bats 
and owls and lizards. Therefore man as he 
was made to be is in the image and likeness of 
God. Man looks like God only when he is 
noble. When we gaze upon the highest type 
of man we see God in miniature. He possesses 
all the attributes of God in the germ. Many of 



34 God Winning Us. 

those attributes are latent and as yet undevel- 
oped. He has love, truth, wisdom, purity, 
tenderness, strength, heroism, and all the other 
qualities of God, like the powers in the seed, 
only waiting for sun and showers to call them 
forth. If we reflect, we shall see that God 
treats us like children. He has built this 
wonderful world for us to dwell in. He has 
stocked it with every comfort and necessity. 
Millions of years ago he began his preparations 
for our reception. He built the immense coal 
bins, and dug the oil wells, and made the seas, 
and filled the earth with the most marvelous 
and rich possibilities. He loves us, guides us, 
instructs us, and disciplines us. 

Man is a spirit, and not simply a body. Not 
" man is a body and has a spirit," but the re- 
verse, " man is a spirit and has a body." The 
spirit has an independent existence. It can dis- 
card the body and leave it behind. It can live 
without it. We are doing this at the rate of a 
hundred thousand every revolution of the 
earth. It is as practicable to leave one's body as 
it is to leave one's house and move into another. 
The spirit is the man — that which is dominant 
and vital. The spirit builds the body as the 
plant builds up the stalk. The seed dies ; only 



Man. 35 

the invisible life rises out of it and gathers 
from the soil its body. Man does this very 
thing — he grows by eating. The spirit steps 
into the wardrobe of nature and puts on its 
garments. If he stops eating, the fleshly drapery 
quickly drops off. Earth is a vast royal dress- 
ing-room, and thousands of spirits are coming 
here every day to array themselves in the robes 
of nature. Our bodies are utilized again and 
again ; they sink back into the soil and are 
woven anew. We may be wearing some part 
of the garment Caesar wore while on earth. 
The apple drops, sinks into the soil, goes to the 
roots of the tree, and comes up apple again. 
During the terrestrial era we put on a new body 
about every seven years. 

The spirit and the body are strangely blent 
in many minds. It is difficult for many to sep- 
arate them and to realize that they are distinctly 
different from each other. It is the spirit that 
moves the body ; it lives in the body and drives 
it onward. It sits in it as the engineer sits in 
the box and drives the engine. The spirit is 
master of the body. The body pleads weari- 
ness, but the spirit orders it about despite its 
weariness. Without the masterful spirit it 
would accomplish nothing. The body is the 



36 God Winning Us. 

instrument on which the spirit plays. The 
spirit sits in it as the organist sits at the organ 
and runs his fingers over the keyboard. When 
we wish to talk or sing we command the vocal 
cords. At tennis we enlist the hands, feet, 
and eyes. We can make the tongue blaspheme 
or pray, sing, or cry. We unconsciously recog- 
nize that the body is a servant and no vital 
part of us. We speak of " my hand," " my foot," 
" my head," as we speak of " my bicycle," " my 
tennis-racket," "my coat or hat." 

The spirit is the substantial man. The spirit 
is often spoken of as an abstraction. Men place 
their hands upon the body and say, " This is the 
substantial part of me." But it is the spirit 
that is substantial. We say, " God is a spirit"; 
and yet he is the creator of the universe, the 
most substantial being in the world. He made 
the solid mountain upon which we stand. He 
made the Rock of Gibraltar. He made every 
farm in America, and we are told that real estate 
is the most substantial of possessions. Watch 
the electric car ascending the steep incline. 
That invisible spirit called electricity is carry- 
ing it up with fifty persons on board. We call 
it electricity, but we might name it anything 
else we choose. It is as invisible as the spirit 



Man. 37 

in the body. Which is the substantial thing — 
the car, the fifty fleshly bodies in it, or the elec- 
tricity ? It is the invisible things that are most 
potent and substantial. It is the spirit of man 
that builds cities, paints pictures, adorns the 
earth with architecture and sculpture, and brings 
order and loveliness everywhere. Gaze on 
Boston Public Library, that magnificent pile 
of beauty and strength, and know that the mind 
of the architect planned and built it. Before a 
stone was laid it was in the mind ; then it was 
placed on paper; and finally fleshly hands and 
muscles were employed as the servants of the 
mind. 

How can the spirit have form ? How is it 
in every part of the body at the same instant? 
A picture of the nervous system is a fair illus- 
tration. The nerves run out to the finger-nails 
and hair. They are in every part of the body. 
It is impossible to put down a needle-point 
without touching one. They are even in the 
teeth. The spirit is the life that is in every 
part — the life that the needle touches when it 
is put down. That life is invisible, but it is 
there. It is the precise form and outline of 
the body. It is in the eyes, the hands, the 
feet, — as the life is in the plant, invisible, in- 
tangible ; as the electricity is in the wire. 



38 God Winning Us. 

There are two departments in man that com- 
pose him. They are the mind and the will. 
They interwork and interplay. One is power- 
less without the other. One thinks, the other 
does. The mind points out the course, the will 
pursues it. The mind plans, the will enforces. 
These are two very distinct things. If the 
mind could not plan, nothing would be done ; if 
the will could not move, nothing would be done. 
It is one thing to outline a proper course, and 
quite another to set it in motion. If the will 
were inactive there could be no motion. A 
man without a will is like a car without a 
trolley — it would either stand forever on the 
track or have to be dragged along by some out- 
side power. If we are to become actual men 
we must be furnished with both light and 
power. Some have much light and little power. 
The will is weak, the motor is defective. Their 
careers consist mostly of thought and speech. 
They are cyclopedias of information, and that 
is all. Others are the reverse — they are im- 
pulsive and thoughtless. They move, but do 
not think. They rush about heedlessly and 
overturn more than they construct. It would 
be more profitable to pay them to keep quiet. 
They rush at things as a bull rushes at a red 



Man. 39 

banner. It is a question which class of persons 
do the least harm in the world, the thoughtless 
or the inactive. It is probably the latter, for 
the cities of the dead have little influence in any 
way. Man was created to be both a thinker 
and a doer. So far as he is defective in either, 
to that extent he lacks actual manhood. 

We arrive now at the closing question, 
" Whither are we bound ?" We are bound for 
heaven; " the end of creation is a heaven out of 
the human race." It took millions of years to 
build this planet. Once it was in the bosom 
of the sun. After it came forth from the sun 
it hung in space for ages, a liquid drop of fire. 
It finally grew so cool that life could appear on 
its surface. Animal life began with what the 
scientists call the univalve, an animal with but 
one shell. It proceeded to the bivalve, an 
animal with two shells. From this it grew 
more and more complex, adding organ after 
organ, assuming more complete and beautiful 
proportions, until man at last arrived, — man, 
the crown and flower of creation ; man, with his 
interlacing nerves, his arterial system, his hun- 
dreds of organs, and the gift of speech. 

The Lord first built the school-room, then 
brought the pupils into it. Man, the final 



40 God Winning Us. 

item of creation, is comparatively recent on the 
earth. This earth is the great seminary in 
which we are instructed. We remain here until 
we graduate into the higher department of the 
skies. We are like the child in the graded 
school, going higher. We are here to learn, 
and here temporarily. This is one of the most 
difficult things for us to comprehend. We can 
not realize that we are here to learn, here to 
make character. We are under the delusion 
that we are here to make money, here to amuse 
ourselves, here to live as easily as possible. 
How to enjoy life is the absorbing question. 
What a tremendous mistake is this ! We are 
here to study hard, here to make the most of 
ourselves, here to prepare for heaven. 

If the boy should get the idea that he was at 
school for purposes of pleasure, to take things as 
easily as possible, we should chide him and speak 
plainly to him. We should say, " You are here 
to study, to get your lessons, no matter how 
much you toil over them. You are here to 
make the most of yourself, to acquire knowl- 
edge, to prepare to enjoy yourself. You are 
here to toil at your books, to sweat over intri- 
cate problems, to pass severe trials and heavy 
examinations." Now we are in the great school- 



Man. 41 

room of earth, and we ought to be resolute with 
ourselves. We ought to talk to ourselves as 
we do to the dilatory youth. We are not here 
to make money, to enjoy ourselves; to eat, 
drink, and be merry. And if we pass our time 
lightly, if we neglect our lessons, we shall have 
to make them up; if not here, then in the 
other world. We must pass our examinations, 
and no processes of cramming at the last moment 
will answer. The Great Schoolmaster is inex- 
orable, inexorable because he loves us and wants 
us to make the most of ourselves. The entire 
object of the creation of man and his life here 
is to get him ready for heaven. We can never 
come into heaven until we get ignorance and 
sensuality and wickedness out of us. We can 
never be happy until we have made the most 
of ourselves. The end of creation is a heaven 
out of the human race, and its processes are 
disciplinary. 




>»~ 



IV. 

THE BIBLE. 

There are two great books that are divine, — 
the universe and the Bible. The universe is 
not considered by many as a book, but it was the 
first book given to men, and the only book in 
which the chirography is God's. This book was 
written before the advent of man on the planet. 
Man found it here when he came. He watched 
the flying cloud, heard the voices of nature, 
scanned her myriad moods, and nature spoke 
to him. Nature can smile and weep, pray and 
sing. Each change in the sky was an utterance 
of God. Each flower and tree whispered some 
message to his soul. Each animal was the 
shrine of some emotion. The reading of the 
Book of Nature has been largely lost. We 
have now so much printed matter that we are 
confused. Once nature was the single book 
and man was the student of a single book. A 
grand and majestic volume, it was bound in 
many hues and throbbing with interest. 

We may get a hint of what nature was to 
42 



The Bible. 43 

the ancient man by contemplating what it is 
even now to us. Under certain aspects the sky 
speaks of tenderness or wrath. The summer 
breeze whispers love ; the hurricane breathes de- 
struction. We read this in nature as easily as 
in a printed book. We gaze into the eyes of 
the violet and without hesitation spell out mod- 
esty, sweetness. We see the peacock spreading 
his tail, and with a smile we say " Vanity." 
The oak of five centuries, whose roots are al- 
most as long as its branches, speaks of strength 
and endurance. The mountain is a symbol of 
grandeur and weight, the tiger of fierceness, the 
lamb of innocence, the dog of fidelity. We 
read this book of nature now to a certain ex- 
tent. How much we lose by walking through 
this ineffable world with our eyes closed ! If we 
respond to nature we shall soon begin to realize 
that she is endeavoring to talk with us ; that she 
is coyly wooing us. Even in the night the 
stars are speaking of the serenity and purity of 
truth. 

Now, thousands of years before the invention 
of writing or printing, nature said vastly more 
to men than to-day. Men studied the wondrous 
volume, turned its leaves, gazed enraptured at 
its illustrations. The w T orld was an immense 



44 God Winning Us. 

university, with each object acting as an in- 
structor. We are hastening back to nature. 
The kindergarten and the laboratory methods 
of teaching are an evidence of this. The lost 
art of correspondences is being revived. We 
are returning to that blessed era when (as 
Shakespeare says) we shall see "sermons in 
stones, tongues in trees, books in the running 
brooks," and God in everything. 

Now let us turn to that other book, the 
Bible, — the dear, grand book that no one could 
relinquish ; the book that accompanies the sol- 
dier to the battle-field ; the book that kings 
honor ; the book that graces the wedding, and 
utters the final benedictions over the sacred 
dead ; the book our father read daily at prayers ; 
the book mother gave us when we left home ; 
the book the President kisses when he takes the 
oath of office ; the book read each Sunday from 
thousands of pulpits. 

The Bible began with a few spoken sentences. 
Before the epoch of writing the only way to 
preserve thought was to repeat it from lip to 
lip, and thus embalm it in the memory. When 
the Lord wished to say something to the world 
he put the thought into the mind of some good 
man, and this man passed it through the lips 



The Bible. 45 

in the form of words and sentences. It was 
articulated rather than printed. In this man- 
ner it was stamped on the minds of the listeners, 
just as our mother taught us to lisp our evening 
prayer, and we in turn taught it to our children, 
and our children carry it down to theirs. It 
was thus that the oral Bible filtered through 
the centuries. It was rehearsed without the 
omission of a word. As the years passed away 
the Lord spoke to other men, and they told it 
to their generation, and finally it became a part 
of the Bible. In this manner the Word of 
God grew. At last there was an oral Bible 
passing down the generations by rehearsal or 
tradition. This went on for thousands of years, 
until writing was invented. It was then crys- 
tallized and became immutable. There came 
into being for the first time a written Word of 
God. 

As the centuries rolled on the Bible grew. 
God said other things to other men, and they 
were written out and given to the world. 
David wrote a book of hymns, and we have the 
Psalms. Isaiah wrote a volume of prophecy, 
and we have Isaiah. Moses wrote the history 
of the Hebrew wanderings, and we have that. 
Some one wrote the romance of Jonah, and we 



46 God Winning Us. 

have that. The four evangelists wrote the 
earthly biography of the Lord. John had a 
wonderful dream recorded in Revelation. The 
Bible was at last finished. It consists of sixty- 
six books, covering a period of thousands of 
years. Then the art of printing was invented, 
and we have the printed Bible. First a few 
chapters repeated from lip to lip. Then follow 
book after book — histories, prophecies, songs, 
stories, idyls, romances, biography, vision — to 
the close of the record. This we call the Word 
of God. 

What is the Word of God? We do not 
care to utter unmeaning phrases. We have 
heard a great deal of the Word of God ; what 
is it? It is not the paper, the type, the words, 
or the sentences; for we might burn these, and 
the Word of God would be uninjured. Men 
did that in the Middle Ages; they piled Bibles 
up in great heaps and burned them, but they 
did not succeed in destroying the Word of God. 
The Word of God is the meaning of the book ; 
it is what it says ; it is the thought in it. The 
Word of God is not the Greek, Hebrew, English, 
or any other special language ; it is the meaning 
imbedded in the language. To illustrate, let 
us recall how the Gospel of Matthew came 
down to us in its present form. 



The Bible. 47 

Jesus spoke in Aramaic. Aramaic was a 
mixed Hebrew and Assyrian, the language 
the Jews acquired in the captivity. It was 
a mongrel Hebrew, as Canadian French is a 
mongrel French or Pennsylvania Dutch is 
a mongrel Dutch. Matthew heard the Lord 
speak in this dialect, remembered what he 
said, and some years afterward wrote it down 
in Hebrew. Years afterward some one trans- 
lated the Hebrew into Greek, centuries after- 
ward some one translated the Greek into Eng- 
lish, and so we have it. First in the Lord's 
heart, then on his lips, then in Matthew's 
mind, then in the Hebrew, Greek, and Eng- 
lish, and from the English into our hearts and 
minds, as we are capable of taking it. 

So the word of God is the meaning of words 
or sentences. It matters not in what shape 
they come, whether by lips or printed sentences ; 
whether by Hebrew, Greek, or English ; it is 
the same unalterable Word. Our friend is not 
changed by wearing other garments. Whether 
he speak or write or act, he is the same dear 
personality. Language is simply the chariot 
that conveys ideas to our minds and hearts. It 
matters little what kind of a box we keep our 
jewels in. The great Kohinoor diamond would 



48 God Winning Us. 

be just as valuable in a case of wood as of gold. 
Whether the case were carved richly or re- 
mained rude and plain, would make no dif- 
ference in the value of the diamond. 

So the Word of God stored from time to time 
in these Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, and English 
cases is the same beautiful, priceless thing it has 
ever been. Now the Word of God is printed 
in every language under heaven. We may buy 
Bibles in hundreds of varied languages, sizes, 
and bindings. The paper, the type, the bind- 
ing, and the languages are not the Word 
of God ; they are the cases in which the jewel 
is kept. The Word of God is invisible, like 
everything spiritual; it is the hidden meaning 
that constitutes the Word of God. 

What wonderful things words are ! I see 
you spending hours over sheets of paper with 
thousands of queer little marks on them — and 
I know some one is talking with you. The 
inhabitant of a country or planet where printing 
is unknown might think you mad. I see the 
lights and shadows chase each other over your 
face as you read. I see the reflection of the 
emotions that are playing over your soul. 
Gladstone is conversing with you ; Homer 
or Dante who lived centuries ago is singing to 



The Bible. 49 

you ; Moses is telling you of his trials in the 
Wilderness campaign ; John is relating his 
superb dream on Patmos ; the author of the 
romance of Jonah is entertaining you ; Dickens 
or Thackeray or Du Maurier are telling their 
unique tales ; " The Tribune " or " The Journal w 
or " The Herald " is relating the latest news 
from England or Cuba. 

What mysterious things words are ! It is 
only man who can read. Some evenings my 
dog becomes impatient with what he doubtless 
considers my stupidity, and, placing his paws 
on my knee, shoves my paper aside with his 
nose and gazes intently into my face, as if to 
say, " You are wasting your time; let us play." 
I show him the article that interests me so 
much, and he gazes right over the top of it. 
By his actions he tells me what he thinks of 
the art of reading. 

Then it is the meaning of language that 
composes it. The mere words are but vehicles 
that convey the meaning to our minds. The 
identical thing can be said in many languages 
— in many forms. An identical truth can be 
conveyed in fifty different languages, in fifty 
different sentences, fifty different methods of 
articulation, fifty different styles of letters, 
4 



50 God Winning Us. 

What has been said here is for the purpose of 
paving the way to the wonderful science of cor- 
respondences, or the inner meaning of the Bible, 
which is defined as that which the words or 
sentences contain. 

The Word of God is not at all dependent upon 
authorship or dates. Scholars are now finding 
out that certain men did not write the particular 
books that are attributed to them; that certain 
books were not written at the time they have 
been said to have been written. Moses did not 
write the account of his own death. Daniel did 
not write Daniel — this is simply the title of the 
book. Jonah did not write Jonah, any more 
than Uncle Tom wrote " Uncle Tom's Cabin." 
David did not write many of the psalms at- 
tributed to him. Paul did not write Hebrews. 
This fact is throwing the orthodox world into 
spasms of fear. They seem to think that if Isaiah 
did not write the whole of Isaiah, and on a par- 
ticular date, its inspiration is gone. But not so 
— the meaning and inspiration are the same 
whoever wrote it and whenever it appeared. 

If it should turn out that some one else wrote 
Shakspere, and that its date of appearance 
is not exactly correct, the poetry would be no 
less musical, grand, or inspiring. Homer is 



The Bible. 51 

not injured in the least by the doubt into which 
we are plunged as to its authorship and date. 
This does not detract one iota from its freedom, 
beauty, and power. If it should turn out that 
some one else composed the twenty-third psalm 
it would remain uninjured. It would sing no 
less sweetly to us. "A rose by any other name 
would smell as sweet." Mark Twain's writings 
are not weakened by the fact that Samuel L. 
Clemens is the author. Gail Hamilton's essays 
are no less spicy and facetious because Abigail 
Dodge wrote them. 

Scholars are finding out that certain books 
that had been ranked as history are fiction. 
The book of Jonah is a story, a piece of fiction. 
It is a kind of parable, containing eternal truth. 
This fact helps rather than injures the book, 
for many have stumbled over it as history. 
Ranked with the class of writing in which the 
Prodigal Son takes a prominent place, the truth 
is no less powerful, and the reason is not shocked 
by trying to swallow it as history. " Uncle 
Tom's Cabin " is no less true because we know 
the actual events related therein never occurred. 
It is more true than nine-tenths of the histories. 
George Eliot's novels are no less helpful be- 
cause they are the product of her fancy. " Pil- 



52 God Winning Us. 

grim's Progress" is no less immortal because it 
is allegory. All the parables of Jesus are 
fiction, yet no portion of the Bible is more 
deeply inspired than these. Therefore we 
need not stumble over Jonah, or the Hebrew 
children in the furnace of fire, or the story of 
the creation of the world in six days, simply 
because they are not veritable history. 

The Bible is not a book of science, and does 
not pretend to teach science. It is the shrine of 
eternal truth. " Pilgrim's Progress " is not a 
book of science, yet no one feels that it is less 
true for that. " Paradise Lost " or " Hamlet, 
Prince of Denmark," are no less powerful be- 
cause they make no attempt to discover and 
record natural science. God breathed his divine 
truth into the hearts of men, and they expressed 
it as best they could. They enshrined it in the 
medium of the times — in the science and lan- 
guage and literature of the day. The Bible is 
not always to be taken literally. A northern 
school-teacher has gotten into difficulties down 
south because she has denied that the earth is 
flat. The clergyman and deacons and religious 
people of the locality where she teaches have 
called a public debate and have proved to their 
satisfaction that the world is not a sphere. The 



The Bible. 53 

Bible says it is flat, and they care nothing about 
what irrelevant scientists may say. John 
Jasper, a colored minister, has written a book 
conclusively proving to his mind that the sun 
goes round the earth. 

The Bible is the containant of eternal truth, 
and is not a book of science. The writers of the 
books of the Bible spoke as they understood in 
relation to the world. They often spoke from 
appearances. God used their literature to put his 
truth in, just as we may place our gems in either 
an ancient case manufactured by crude hands or 
in a box made by Tiffany, embellished and fash- 
ioned in the latest arts. Whatever we do, the 
gems are not injured or altered. The Bible 
speaks of the " pillars of the earth," of the 
"foundations of the earth," but the truth 
remains the same. We ourselves speak of the 
"ends of the earth " as though it were flat. 
We say the sun "rises," though we know well 
this is not true. We speak ourselves quite 
often from appearances. We say the light 
"streams out from a picture," that a color is 
" warm," that a man is " great." 

The correspondences of the Bible are the 
inner truths, the thoughts that repose in its 
everlasting well. We know what it is to " read 



54 God Winning Us. 

between the lines." We know what it is to 
read a book and get much out of it, in five 
years to read it again and find more there; to 
read many times and still find something we 
had missed. We read a person superficially; 
we get better acquainted with him and find 
deeper things in him ; at last he becomes our 
bosom-friend of whom we never tire, out of 
whose heart flows ever-living affections. The 
world sees one side of a woman (the outside), 
her friends see her heart, her husband sees her 
heart of hearts. Some persons are shallow like 
water running over stones. Others grow deeper 
the longer you know them. So there is an 
interior meaning in books, and meaning beneath 
meaning. There is an interior meaning in the 
rocks, the trees, the flowers, the animals ; and 
the longer we study them, the more we find. 
Only in nature and in the Bible is this hidden 
meaning inexhaustible. The story of the 
Prodigal Son is fathomless. There is food there 
for the ages. We may read the Bible and 
never find the shallows, for there are none. 
The Bible is, in this sense, different from all 
other books. Other books may be read and 
finished, but in heaven, as on earth, the Word 
of God will be the comfort and guide of 



The Bible. 55 

humanity. It bows to the simple comprehen- 
sion of the child, and thrills the soul of the 
venerable scholar and seer. It is the inner 
sense that makes the Bible the Word of God. 
It is this that lifts it high above all other forms 
of literature, above all dates and questions of 
authorship, and makes it the book of books, 
the book of the ages. 



"^^•# 0*g*&+ 



THIS WORLD. 

Three fundamental questions demand reply- 
when considering the problem of the material 
creation of the world. What is it made of? 
Where did it come from ? What is the pur- 
pose of its coming? 

The ancient theological idea that the world 
is made out of nothing has passed with all 
thinking people. It is now supposed to be 
created out of God ; we trace it back to God 
and reverently pause there. A world made 
out of nothing would be composed of nothing, 
and therefore could not be a world. It would 
be a nonentity. It would be an illusion, and it 
is difficult to convince a thinking and rational 
person that the material world is an illusion, 
a chimera of the vision. It is tangible, visible, 
solid, and not to be argued away. 

Christian science holds with the old theology, 

that the world is created out of nothing. It 

tells us that everything that we see, handle, or 

come into contact with is only an idea. The 

56 



This World. 57 

tree is an idea photographed on the retina of 
the eye. The trees and the solid rocks are an 
illusion. My friend, pointing to some objects 
in his yard, said, " There is no tree, no rock, no 
earth, — all is the product of a too vivid fancy ." 
I replied, " If on some black night, when your 
mind is freed from illusions, heedless of your 
steps, you should come up hard against that 
tree, your logic would suffer defeat." When 
we come suddenly into contact with nature and 
get severe bumps, illusions are knocked out of 
us. There are times when express trains, 
earthquakes, floods, and heavy burdens con- 
vince us that the world is not wholly ideal. It 
makes exceedingly difficult a belief in the illu- 
siveness of all things. It aids the theory that 
the planet is a tangible fact, composed of tangi- 
ble substances, and that it is created from God. 
What is matter? What is this stuff we call 
rock, soil, air, water? These are all varied 
forms of the planet. The rock is one of the 
most condensed forms. Soil is rock pulverized. 
Water and air is the planet in solution. The 
earth is condensed sunshine. It is a fragment 
of the sun. Once it was as thin, light, and airy 
as the fleeciest cloud seen on a summer's day. 
It was thus nebulous and cloudlike because of 



58 God Winning Us. 

its heat. Once the sun itself was so tremend- 
ously heated that it was lighter than the lightest 
gauze veil. The earth is a fragment of the sun 
cast from its surface and cooled until it has 
come to the solidity of the present time. Then, 
the earth is made out of sunshine. The sun- 
shine came from God. 

How was the world made ? It was made 
by the method of evolution. Evolution means 
gradual development. When anything comes 
to being and maturity by a process of slow un- 
folding it is said to come by evolution. A 
watch is manufactured ; a tree, a horse, a boy, 
a mind unfolds; they grow and proceed by 
evolution. Evolution is simply the manner in 
which a thing is done. 

So the world grew. God created the spiritual 
sun from himself. The material sun was 
created from the spiritual sun. The earth is a 
fragment of the sun cooled and solidified. As 
the sun condensed by cooling it grew heavy and, 
bulging at the equator, cast off fragments which 
became planets. A drop of oil, set whirling in 
a vacuum, will flatten at the poles and bulge at 
the equator. Revolved still faster, it will throw 
off fragments of itself. These fragments will 
circle about it. With the sun the fragments 



This World. 59 

cast into the distant ethers with tremendous 
force dropped along an orbit formed by the 
centrifugal and centripetal forces. These frag- 
ments would naturally fall on a straight line, 
but the pulling of the sun by attraction drew 
them constantly inward, until they described a 
circle. A boy swinging a ball about him held 
by a string is a fair illustration. The ball en- 
deavors to get away and fly into space ; the 
string holds it to a certain orbit. Attraction 
of the sun acts on the planets as the string does 
on the ball. This is how the earth was made, 
and why it is this moment dropping through the 
ethers fifty times swifter than a rifle-ball. So 
the planet is traced back to God. First to our 
sun ; then to the spiritual sun about which the 
fixed stars are supposed to move ; then to God. 
The world was not created and finished six 
thousand years ago, nor any number of ages 
ago. God is continually creating it. As the 
human body is constantly recreated, the planet 
is created every instant. The body is continu- 
ally exhausted and continually replenished. In 
a cycle of about seven years an entirely new 
body has replaced the old one. This is true of 
the planet on a vaster scale, and in larger cycles. 
God is constantly in every atom of the earth, 



60 God Winning Us. 

down to the central fires. The old theologies 
tell us that the earth was created and finished 
in six days. Then God ceased his labors and 
rested. Geologists have discovered that it has 
been millions of years in making, and now it 
is known by the highest thinkers that it is still 
in the process of making and that it will never 
be finished. Like the soul, it has the possibili- 
ties of eternal progress. As the sunshine that 
comes to us to-day is new sunshine, fresh from 
a journey of a hundred million miles ; sunshine 
that has never visited the earth before; 
sunshine that has never been seen before by 
human eyes, so the life of God is streaming 
into the earth, renewing it every instant. 

The earth was made for man, and man is its 
diadem and its master. Man stands next to 
God ; as the Psalmist says, "a little lower than 
God." God alone is his master. God only is 
greater than he. Man causes the earth to blos- 
som like the rose. He hews down forests, and 
builds vessels that carry him over raging seas. 
He constructs palaces and magnificent cities to 
dwell in. The animal creation obeys him and 
fears him. He harnesses the lightnings to his 
triumphal chariot, and rides on the wings of 
steam. He conquers gravitation, and floats 



This World. 61 

aloft in the heavens. He is a combination of 
the animal and the angel ; he gathers up the 
universe into his being. He is the highest of 
the animals. Animal creation began with 
something below the oyster, a creature consist- 
ing principally of a stomach; and from this up 
to man with his hundreds of interworking 
organs, his interlacing nerves, his upright posi- 
tion, the gift of speech, and the stamp of divin- 
ity upon his forehead. The earth is his abode, 
he is the flower of creation, and there will never 
be anything higher. 

The earth is his temporal dwelling place. It 
took millions of years to construct and adorn it 
for his advent. From the hour when it was 
hot, gaseous, chaotic, brooded by darkness and 
horror, to the hour when it became a paradise, 
suited for his abode, countless ages took their 
flight. Man was the latest comer; he is com- 
paratively recent. God prepared the world for 
his approach, as the bridegroom prepares the 
home for the reception of the bride. Then he 
leads her forth to grace it with her love, her 
beauty, and her facility. God patiently built 
the earth through slowly passing ages and 
brought man here — man, its monarch and mas- 
ter. With the most loving forethought he 



62 God Winning Us. 

built the vast coal-bins, dug the great oil-wells, 
sowed the forests, stocked the sea with fishes, 
and made everything ready for the comfort and 
delight of man when he should arrive. Did 
ever king adorn a more matchless structure ? 
What a roof man has over him ; what pillars 
and architraves support it; what a carpet beneath 
his feet constantly woven anew, variegated and 
sweet ; what music of the birds and the spheres ; 
what forms of beauty to fascinate the eye ! 

The earth is the primary school for the in- 
struction of man during planetary infancy. He 
usually graduates into the skies in three-score 
years and ten. His relations here are not per- 
manent. As the life of the seed takes up the 
soil and builds itself a temple, so the spirit of 
man constructs a body for the temporary pur- 
poses of his earthly schooling. His body be- 
longs to the soil as really as the wood of the tree 
does, and when he goes away he will return to 
the earth what he has borrowed. While here 
at school he occupies it temporarily, as the girl 
at boarding-school occupies her room in the 
dormitory. The world is a unique, spherical 
academy hung in space by invisible threads of 
attraction. Here we are away out in space, our 
nearest neighbor two hundred and fifty thou- 



This World. 63 

sand miles away, and that neighbor tenantless. 
The moon is a burned-out crater. It is the 
lantern that illuminates our way. The sun is a 
gorgeous fireplace about which we gather, — a 
reservoir of light, heat, and life. It is the 
beneficent power that robes the earth in verd- 
ure and paints it with fair hues. Here we 
are at school away out in the ethers, the school- 
room plunging through space beyond human 
reckoning, fifty times faster than a rifle-ball, 
and at the same time spinning around its axis 
at the rate of a thousand miles an hour. 

We are taught in many ways. The physical 
body with its complicated organs disciplines us 
grandly. It teaches us to bear patiently weari- 
ness and a thousand limitations. The elements 
of nature teach us to endure hardship. We must 
brave severe storms, wade through snows, climb 
hills, sweat under tropical suns, shiver in cold 
blasts, grow our food, weave our garments, and 
build our homes. We are taught in other ways. 
We are instructed by human spirits. Teachers 
patiently endeavor to strengthen the mind ; 
parents and friends lead us onward to manhood 
and womanhood. We are taught by our occu- 
pations, our trades, professions, pleasures, pur- 
suits. Even while we teach others we are at 



64 God Winning Us. 

the same time being taught by them. Invisible 
spirits, who once lived here and have left us, 
sway us with their sweet influences. Mother, 
wife, husband, children, friends, who have 
passed onward, touch us and mold us. The 
great and the good of all ages encompass us. 
God is with us. " In him we live and move 
and have our being." " We are come to Mount 
Sion, to the innumerable company of the angels, 
to the spirits of just men made perfect." Earth 
is bathed in heaven. 

In this world we begin to live, but that life 
is transitory, like the babe in the womb prepar- 
ing for the activities of an outer, freer, and 
larger existence; like the chick in the egg, 
which will, in the fullness of time, pick its way 
through the limiting shell and fly into the light. 
We are no more intended to remain here after 
the period of incubation than the butterfly is to 
remain in the chrysalis. Prolonged incubation 
would be fatal. Earth is the academy of the 
race, organized and equipped to fit God's chil- 
dren for the skies. 

The world is a creation of love. God has 
lavished his affection upon it. God is love, 
loves everybody and everything, and supremely 
desires the happiness of his children. God's 



This World. 65 

laws are all love. Laws respected and rightly 
used are unalloyed blessings. Fire warms our 
homes, cooks our food, speeds our car. It is 
only a scourge when wrongly handled. Gravi- 
tation holds the planets in place, holds us and 
our belongings to the soil in safety. It is only 
when, through ignorance or carelessness, we 
disobey it, that it turns on us and punishes us. 
There is no useless, causeless, aimless sorrow. 
Behind every disaster is a broken law. 

Even God could not make a law that would 
work in two entirely opposite ways at the same 
time. When a man falls from a precipice, gravi- 
tation must be honored ; if God should suspend 
it the world would be wrecked, every star would 
be displaced. He can not abrogate gravitation 
and at the same time permit it to remain in 
force. He can not make the nature of fire to 
burn and then not have it to burn in special 
cases. There are some things God can not do. 
He can not make a river with no banks. He 
can not make a complete circle and at the same 
time have it broken. He can not grow a hun- 
dred-year oak in ten minutes. He can not 
transfer us from New York to Boston without 
passing us over the intervening space. He 
can not make two and two six. Let us rid our- 
5 



66 God Winning Us. 

selves of the idea that God can do everything. 
He is (like us) under restraints. Having made 
his laws, he respects them, as the watchmaker, 
having constructed the watch after his wisest 
thought, respects its methods of working. 

God can not construct a human body, or a 
material universe, to follow certain wise laws 
and then avert disaster when man ignores them. 
He is obliged to construct things after certain 
methods, and the overturning of those methods 
must result in disaster and confusion. God 
can not confer experience upon us if we have 
had no experiences. He can not make a con- 
queror of one who has never conquered. He 
can not make a man strong and independent 
who lies forever in the cradle rocked by angels. 

Most troubles we bring upon ourselves. Dis- 
asters are the product of broken law. Man is 
responsible for the wars that desolate the earth. 
He might have peace if he so desired. God 
wants no war, and is not responsible for it. 
Man is responsible for the miseries arising from 
human slaverv. God would have it crushed 
out forever. The unhappy dispositions that 
destroy the home, that trouble the community, 
— anger, jealousy, vanity, envy, pride, lust, 
cruelty, vaulting ambition, — God is not respon- 



This World. 67 

sible for. Man can stop them when he wishes 
to do so. If these were erased from the heart, 
earth would be a heaven. 

God wishes employers to be generous and 
sympathetic with their help ; he wants the hired 
to be faithful to their masters. This simple dis- 
position on both sides would cure the labor 
trouble. He wants no labor problem, and we can 
wipe it from our program when we sincerely wish 
to do so. He wants no poverty, no suffering, no 
physical want. He has created enough for all, 
and it is the cornering of his gifts that causes 
the difficulty. When law is obeyed there will 
be no suffering in all the earth. Pain is benefi- 
cent, a warning that a law is broken. Pain is 
a token of God's love. It is a herald angel 
crying " Stop ! danger ahead ! w Scientists tell 
us that a race of men insensible to pain would 
become extinct in six months. They would be 
like the man on the track, with the lightning 
express behind him, deaf to its noises and blind 
to its approach. 

We are becoming less and less lawless under 
the tuition of inexorable experience. We are 
learning how to use the forces of nature. We 
are getting well in hand the reins of steam and 
electricity, and shall one day know how to use 



68 God Winning Us. 

them in safety. Law is essential love, for if 
God made it it must be love. The earth was 
created from matchless love. The day is swiftly 
dawning when discords, diseases, sorrows shall 
flee away, when men shall live on to old age in 
health and peace, and at last, without a pain 
or regret, sink into the final sleep which we call 
death. 




^^^ 

§ 



VI. 

THE OTHER WORLD. 

To enter the other world we must first pass 
through the experience miscalled death. The 
day dawns at last for all when this wonderful 
instrument, the physical body, wears out or is 
rendered useless by disease or accident. It is 
then that what we miscall death occurs. The 
spirit, which is the essential man, dwells in the 
body from infancy, though invisible to the 
fleshly eye. The body is like a close-fitting, 
seamless garment drawn over it. It is thus 
that the spiritual body identifies itself with the 
natural body. The spiritual body is not, as 
many think, created at death. It is the essen- 
tial man, and the flesh upon which we gaze is 
but its outer garment. The flesh is actually no 
part of man ; it is something entirely foreign to 
him ; something he will discard when he gets 
through with it, as he does his clothing when it 
is soiled or worn out. The body is a house 
which he carries about with him to protect him 
from the rigors of life. Think for a moment 
69 



70 God Winning Us. 

how thickly we are wrapped in this world. 
Note the garments which the spirit wears. 
They are tripartite, a threefold guard. First 
the flesh, then the clothing, then the houses in 
which we live. 

The fleshly body is material and a part of 
this planet. It never leaves this planet. Paul 
says, " Flesh and blood can not inherit eternal 
life." These temples of muscle and nerves and 
blood we shall bid adieu to forever when we 
die. There is an impassable gulf between the 
material and the spiritual. Not a drop of water, 
not an atom of the world has left it since its 
creation. Yet a hundred thousand persons 
leave this world every day. And they do not 
take their bodies with them ; they leave them as 
a legacy to the earth. The natural body is a 
lump of clay ; it came from the dust, and to 
the dust it must return. The body does not 
move or think of itself; it is the spirit that sets 
it in motion ; it is the spirit manipulating the 
brain, as the organist does the keys of the 
instrument, that brings out the intellectual 
music. Remove the spirit from the body and 
the brain would become as dead as the sod. 
Paul says there are two bodies : " There is a 
natural body and there is a spiritual body." 



The Other World. 71 

"One is sown, the other is raised." And he 
bluntly calls those persons " fools " who suppose 
that their fleshly bodies are themselves, and 
that they are to take them away into the other 
life. 

When we leave the body we leave it for- 
ever. The bird never returns to the shell after 
it has once gotten out. What a little fool it 
would be to even wish to return to such dismal 
and narrow quarters, having once tried the vast 
outer glory. The butterfly never folds its gor- 
geous wings and becomes a crawling w 7 orm 
again. Immediately at death the spirit is 
separated from the body. It does not, as many 
think, lie in the grave for untold ages awaiting 
some general day of awakening. It does not 
lie in its charnel-house amid " dead men's 
bones and all uncleanness," listening impa- 
tiently for the liberating trump of Gabriel. 
Jesus said to the thief on the cross," To-day thou 
shalt be with me in Paradise." The grave is 
not Paradise. He describes the Rich Man and 
Lazarus as going instantly into the spirit world : 
"The beggar died and was carried by angels 
into the bosom of Abraham." "The Rich 
Man died also and in Hades he lifted up his 
eyes, being in torment." 



72 God Winning Us. 

There is no distance lying between us and the 
other world. Heaven is not beyond the stars ; it 
is here. The dying see bright forms and hear 
celestial music about their bedsides. There is 
simply a great veil swinging between this world 
and the other, — the veil woven of flesh and 
blood. Occasionally it becomes so thin and 
transparent that we can see through it ; so 
gauze-like that strains of the heavenly melody 
sift through its loose texture. 

There is actually no death ; what we mis- 
call death is the life more abundant. It is 
what occurs to the robin when it breaks the 
shell and takes wing. Who could mourn for 
the robin and call its blessed transfiguration by 
the name of death? Possibly the unhatched 
chick left behind might do so. Why tremble 
before death ? before that which is not ? 
Death is the introduction to light, life, joy of 
which the most lovely experiences of earth give 
but the dimmest hint. Here we usually see the 
earthward side of death, — the livid face, the 
fleeting breath, the signs of anguish, — and then 
all is still and cold and the peace of extinction 
seems to rest upon it. The first scene is closed, 
and the curtain drops ; it will rise again upon 
another and fairer one. 



The Other World. 73 

We awake in what is called the Middle 
State. It is a vast world of mixed inhabitants, 
so nearly like this in every respect that it is 
difficult to realize the Rubicon of death has 
been crossed and our barque has touched the 
immortal shore. The soul has, as we say, 
" made the mysterious leap into the darkness," 
and it finds that it was no great leap, that it is 
not mysterious, and that it is into the light. 
There is need of a great sorting and sifting 
place like the Middle State. Few are perfect 
enough at death to immediately become angels; 
few bad enough to become devils. 

We open our eyes in the bright morning 
of immortality, with the faces of celestial 
angels shining on us. God will leave no 
stone unturned to sway us to the better life. 
These sweet and sacred potencies, shining 
on us at the moment of awakening, are de- 
signed to make impressions of holiness that 
will continue, and, by their vividness, hold us 
to the good and the true. 

The Middle State is the great meeting 
ground of friends and acquaintances. The 
first and natural thing is a grand reunion 
of old friends. The novelty of the occasion is 
entrancing, and for a while joy is full. Friends 



74 God Winning Us. 

may meet, even if they have passed on into 
heaven. They may remain together as long 
as they choose — forever, if they desire, or only 
for a few moments. Freedom will be larger 
there than here, in this respect. Every one 
we have known will be readily recognized. 
Personality and identity are not effaced, but 
rather emphasized. There will be the change 
only of illumination. The life in the Middle 
State is, like this life, temporary and of short 
duration. It is the final preparation for heaven 
— a sort of post-graduate course. We are here 
on earth for the heavenly schooling, for the 
purpose of ridding ourselves by heavenly cul- 
ture of all the imperfect things that belong 
to the first stages of progress. The Intermediate 
State completes this process. It puts on the 
final touches. 

The complex trials of life are a beneficent 
discipline of the soul ; a course by which we 
acquire patience, and love, and wisdom, and 
endurance, and integrity. This process pro- 
ceeds in the Middle State with greater speed. 
The truth, streaming on the spirit with greater 
intensity, forces a decision. It is like light 
shining into a dark room; the darkness must 
give place to light. Everything there comes 



The Other World. 75 

more quickly to maturity, like a flower trans- 
planted from the cold and sterile soil of the 
North into tropical latitudes. Unfolding pro- 
ceeds with greater rapidity ; it fairly springs 
into blossoming and fruiting. 

Here, in this final school of God, we shall 
be compelled to show our hand, to reveal our 
quality. There can be no pause, no evasion. 
We must decide for good or evil. The Lord 
will do all possible to influence to the right ; 
he will enlist the services of all the angels ; all 
the powers of his spiritual universe will be used 
freely to win us to heaven. Yet, at the same 
time, he will leave us in perfect freedom. He 
will influence, but he will not compel. With 
such a host of wicked people entering the spir- 
itual world every day, there must be evil soci- 
eties there. Death does not sanctify ; there is 
nothing remedial in merely losing the breath. 
This immense company of bad people, pouring 
continually into the other world, has to be dealt 
with. Society there is exactly the same as here; 
for death simply transfers, it does not change. 
Society exactly as it leaves this world enters the 
other. Yet in tenser powers of good are thrown 
on the spirit. Most persons will readily yield to 
the good, — the sweep of most lives is upward. 



76 God Winning Us. 

It is, however, reasonable to suppose that there 
will be some incorrigible characters who will 
not yield at once. These hardened and stub- 
born cases will congregate by the laws of 
affinity. If they do this here, they will be 
likely to do it there. 

There is nothing arbitrary about these re- 
lations. Everything is perfectly natural. The 
wicked may go directly to heaven if they choose; 
but going to heaven means simply seek- 
ing heavenly-minded society. The proba- 
bility is they will not do this until they them- 
selves become heavenly minded. They will 
not, because they will not want to. The good 
may go to hell if they choose — that is, into bad 
society ; but they will not wish to unless it be 
for the purpose of helping the bad to the better 
life. By a congenial procedure the good and 
the bad get together. And in the Bible one 
company is called heaven', the other, hell. The 
Middle State is the great deciding place. By a 
natural law, the good will go one way, the bad 
another. 

In our great cities the same thing is going on 
by a tardier process. Some seek the slums, 
the low dance halls, the drinking-saloons, the 
houses of prostitution; others the places of 



The Other World. 77 

thrift, the honorable business circles, the 
churches, and the sacred homes. Each seeks by 
the freest choice. No person is driven into 
wickedness. It is for us to say here freely 
whether we will live in heaven or hell. It will 
be for us to make this same final decision in the 
Intermediate State. Hell is not a state of pun- 
ishment ; it is nothing that the Lord has made ; 
it is only a congregation of persons who have 
deliberately chosen the bad. 

Take a great city largely composed of 
thieves, cut-throats, knaves, harlots, and pimps, 
and it will be a place of terror and dark- 
ness that might very fittingly bear the name 
of hell. To venture out by day or night 
would be like venturing into the infernal 
regions. It would actually be descending 
into hell. And the very scenery of such 
a community — the faces, the forms, the ex- 
pressions of voice, the dress — would take on 
the character of the place itself. Iniquity 
would be mirrored everywhere. The opposite 
character would make a heaven in every aspect 
and every outline. 

No one is driven either into heaven or 
hell. He seeks the society he loves best, 
the society that harmonizes with his charac- 



78 God Winning Us. 

ter. No one will want to go to heaven 
who does not want to be heavenly-hearted. 
For heaven is this and nothing more. " The 
kingdom of heaven is within you/' or it is 
nowhere. 

In heaven there are innumerable societies, 
the members of these societies being per- 
fectly congenial. We will join an immense 
society composed of bosom friends — persons 
with exactly such temperaments, hopes, loves, 
activities as ours. Select the most congenial 
friend on earth, the one most loved, he who 
brings greatest joy, homelikeness, and peace. 
This will be our world in heaven. We may 
enter any society of heaven we choose; but 
we will choose to seek our own. There we 
shall be perfectly at ease, perfectly at home, 
no antagonisms, no misunderstandings, no 
criticisms. Each will love and comprehend the 
other as he does himself. "Here we see as 
through a glass darkly ; there we shall see face 
to face." " Here we know in part ; there we 
shall know even as we are known." Each 
member of these heavenly societies will be so 
much alike that there will be a family likeness 
in their faces. 

In heaven there will be no time, — it is the 



The Other World. 79 

timeless world. In other words, there will be 
plenty of time. There will be an eternal morn- 
ing, a perpetual springtime. In our happiest 
moments time is not recognized — hours seem 
seconds. In dreams years are crowded into 
minutes. We shall be so happy in heaven 
that time will be utterly unknown. In heaven 
there will be no space, yet the powers of loco- 
motion will not be extinguished. There will 
be space without its limitations. 

We are continually cutting down space and 
overcoming it by steam and electricity. In 
heaven space will be entirely overcome. The 
heavenly inhabitant will journey on the wings 
of thought. His wishes will be his wings. 
Thought is spaceless and timeless. It travels 
to the most distant constellation as quickly as 
across the room. 

The beauty of the residents of heaven is 
indescribable. The greatest beauty will be 
the noblest character. Beauty of face, figure, 
and motion is the configuration of a beautiful 
soul. Some naturally homely faces are trans- 
figured by a beautiful soul until they shine 
and fascinate. This law works more readily 
in heaven than anywhere else ; it works there 
to perfection. Every look, every motion, 



80 God Winning Us. 

every word is an exposition of the spirit. 
This law plays in both directions. We 
know how a bad heart will degrade the very 
features of the face ; how character will reveal 
itself in the voice, motions, contour of eyes and 
mouth, even in clothing. 

The residents of heaven are robed in gar- 
ments whose beauty is not to be compared 
with anything on earth. What wonderful 
hues! what exquisite fashions! what lines of 
art ! what melody in their folds ! These gar- 
ments glow like flame, glisten like light, palpi- 
tate with deep and unutterable glory. The 
scene of the transfiguration hints at the effect. 
But these garments depend for their beauty 
upon the soul that wears them. 

There are magnificent dwellings in heaven. 
They shadow with their splendor the most glit- 
tering palaces known to earth. These dwellings 
are filled with exquisite furniture. There are 
frescoed interiors that only an angel can paint. 
They dazzle the eye of the novice. They are 
innumerable. " In my Father's house are many 
mansions." 

Paul tells us that he himself was one day 
caught up into the third heaven and saw 
things beyond the powers of description. 



The Other World. 81 

"Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it 
entered into the heart of man to conceive the 
things prepared for them that love him." 

The scenery of heaven transcends anything on 
earth. John has made an effort in Revelation to 
describe it, and has failed. Journey to the Golden 
Gate of the West, or to the Golden Horn of the 
East; gaze upon the most enchanting valleys 
of earth ; cast your eyes along the most dizzy 
and majestic mountain ranges ; visit the Vale of 
Cashmere, — and heaven will rise above them as 
the Alps tower above the Everglades of Florida. 
Anything worthy to be named heaven must be 
of a beauty that is indescribable. Therefore, 
in attempting to speak of heaven, there is an 
embarrassment in finding comparisons. It is 
attempting the impossible. The highest enjoy- 
ments we know, the most wonderful loveliness 
we can imagine, entirely fail to illustrate the 
life of heaven. 

There will be occupation in heaven, but 
not labor. We shall do what we would be 
unhappy to leave undone. Heaven will be 
intensely human. It will not be a ghostly, 
a shadowy, an unnatural life. It will not 
be a perpetual service of song and prayer. A 
never-ending public service of worship would 



82 God Winning Us. 

before long become unbearable. If we doubt 
this, let us try it for a single week here. Heaven 
is not an eternal prayer-meeting. If it were, 
most people would not wish to go there, for 
the prayer-meetings are sparsely attended on 
earth. A heaven of this kind would be an 
empty heaven. 

We shall be intensely human there. We 
shall have our individual enterprises. We 
could not bear a heaven of inactivity. We 
may have it if we choose ; but we shall long 
for something to do. No high soul can sit 
down long with folded hands. Pleasures and 
occupations will be inextricably mixed. The 
life of heaven will be a life of uses. 

All little children go immediately to heaven. 
There they are guarded and instructed by 
angels. There they are rudimental angels, as 
here they were rudimental men or women. 
Irrespective of the character of parents all chil- 
dren are at once convoyed to heaven by angels. 
They are delivered to the care of great, sweet 
mother angels who love them as their own. 
They are cared for by angels who, when on 
earth, loved children with a great affection. 
There they are never forlorn, never homesick. 
There is so much beauty, love, and enjoyment 



The Other World. 83 

there that they can not get lonely. They are 
reared under the most delightful conditions. 
They witness no exhibitions of turbulent pas- 
sion, hear no profanity, see no bursts of anger, 
experience no wickedness, no selfishness. Every 
voice, form, act, object, is beautiful, pure, and 
peaceful. The schools of heaven, where the 
children go, are serene, interesting, and pro- 
foundly helpful. That we are conveying this 
angelic idea of instruction to earth is evident in 
the expansion of the kindergarten system. The 
instruction of heaven is now supplanting the 
old crude and artificial methods very rapidly. 

All heathen have, like everybody else, the 
opportunities to choose their destiny. The 
heathen are not, as the old theologies asserted, 
turned into hell in one great company. Good 
heathen, though they have never heard of Christ, 
will go to heaven if they have the spirit of 
Christ. Those born in savagery are not to blame 
for it, and certainly will not be damned for it. 
The loving God is not so unreasonable and 
cruel as this. The good of all faiths, or no 
faith, will enter heaven. The wicked of all 
faiths, or no faith, will not care to go to heaven. 




*Jt 




VII. 

GOD ACCOMMODATING HIMSELF 

TO US. 

{INCARNATION.) 

One of the most perplexing problems that 
has occupied the mind of Man is the mystery 
of the incarnation. How the Infinite God, who 
fills the universe with his presence, could have 
become a man like us, passing through birth, 
infancy, youth, to manhood, and dying in com- 
mon with the race. How this Almighty being 
could hunger and thirst and become weary. 
How he could suffer pain, loneliness, discour- 
agement, and doubt, has puzzled the highest 
thinkers. I am not going to pretend to make 
this matter so clear that there will be no mys- 
tery about it. Life, even common life, is full 
of mystery. 

What is electricity ? No one can tell ; yet it 

is a fact, a practical fact, the reality of which 

we experience daily. Who can explain the 

mystery of a seed ? Who can tell why a hand- 

84 



God Accommodating Himself To Us. 85 

ful of seeds planted side by side, in the same 
soil, nourished by the same water, bathed by 
the same sunshine and atmosphere, will turn 
out one a cucumber, another a strawberry, an- 
other an oak, and another a peach tree ? 

The mystery of our own being is as great 
as the mystery of the being of Jesus. How 
our spirits came to inhabit these tabernacles 
of flesh and blood, how we have lived in 
them and silently grown from the infant to the 
adult, is as inscrutable a mystery as how God 
could come in the same manner. If we gaze 
upon our own child, wife, husband, friend, as 
tremendous a mystery will confront us as there 
is anywhere in the wide universe. Therefore, 
if we can not comprehend our own nearest 
friend ; if we can not comprehend the being of a 
seed ; if we can not comprehend birth and death ; 
if we can not fathom the mystery of the union 
of soul and body ; if a daisy, a robin, a crystal, 
a drop of water, a leaf, present problems that as 
yet baffle us, we ought not to doubt the possi- 
bility of the coming of God into a human life 
simply because it is beyond our fathoming. If 
we have ourselves come into life and taken up 
our abode in the form of an infant, passing 
from this to adult manhood, why should it 



86 God Winning Us. 

seem impossible that the spirit of God could do 
the same? If it is an indisputable fact with 
us, we ought to be able to realize that it might 
have been a fact with him. 

"Incarnation" is a technical word used mostly 
by theologians — a word that seldom passes the 
lips of men and women of practical affairs. As 
a rule, it is not best to use technical expres- 
sions, for their meaning does not find easy lodg- 
ment in the majority of minds. But when we 
have considered this word for a few moments 
we shall realize that there is no single word nor 
any single sentence that brings the great fact of 
the coming of God into human life so clearly 
before the mind. When we become acquainted 
with the etymology of the word we shall treas- 
ure it up in our vocabulary. It is the union of 
two Latin words — the preposition " in," mean- 
ing "into," and the noun "caro," meaning 
" flesh." The idea is to clothe with flesh, to 
invest with flesh. In old times wounds were 
spoken of as "incarnating" when the flesh was 
knitting or granulating. Laurence Sterne says : 
" My uncle Toby's wound was nearly well, 'twas 
just beginning to incarnate." There is the car- 
nation color, or flesh color. There is the carna- 
tion rose or pink. Holland speaks of "a blossom 



God Accommodating Himself To Us. 87 

like to a damask or incarnate rose." We speak 
of illustrious or saintly men and women as being 
" love incarnate " or " patience incarnate," or the 
"incarnation of beauty, or brilliance, or fidel- 
ity." We mean that these high attributes are 
gathered up, dwelling in human flesh and acting 
through it. We mean that love, wisdom, love- 
liness, beauty, ability, have taken up their abode 
in flesh and blood and are shining through it. 
Jeffrey says of a certain woman : " She is a 
new incarnation of the illustrious dead." 

Now, what is the incarnation of God ? Is it 
not plain? Is it not God come to dwell in 
flesh and blood ? Is it not those great and per- 
fect attributes we associate with God filling and 
shining through an earthly life? Is it not God 
himself coming to take up his abode in a human 
body, as we have done? Is this so remarkable, 
so impossible, when we contemplate our own 
identical act ? Years ago our spirits entered the 
soft and lovely temple of infancy to dwell there 
for a while. So, exactly, came the spirit of 
God. We fill these bodies with our personality, 
with our characteristics and peculiar qualities. 
The Lord did the same. He was incarnate 
God, we are incarnate man. The mystery of 
his incarnation is no greater than the mystery 



88 God Winning Us. 

of our incarnation. If we can not understand 
his act, neither can we understand ours. We 
have each arrived on this planet and have been 
clothed, invested, encompassed with flesh. We 
gaze through fleshly eyes, speak through fleshly 
lips, act through fleshly muscles, thrill by fleshly 
nerves. 

Can the Infinite spirit of God become small 
enough to limit himself to a human form ? He 
does not limit himself to it any more than we do. 
Every person transcends any outward revelation 
of himself. God can enshrine himself in a 
universe, a landscape, a man, or a violet. Yet 
he is greater than any of these. Does a great 
man necessarily require a great body to hold his 
soul? Napoleon was little, but many an imbe- 
cile has weighed two hundred pounds. Glad- 
stone continued growing grander and more 
learned for eighty-six years, though his body 
remained as it was. We must not think that 
great spiritual or mental qualities require great 
masses of flesh to hold them. Shakspere was 
probably no larger physically than the average 
man. Neither should we think that the Great 
God can not dwell in us because of the size of 
our bodies. Spiritual or mental greatness has 
no relation to material bulk. Isaac Watts 



God Accommodating Himself To Us. 89 

replied, when criticized for his diminutive 
size: 

1 ' Could I in stature reach the pole, 
Or grasp creation in my span, 
I would be measured by my soul ; 
The mind's the measure of a man." 

It is perfectly easy for God to inhabit a 
human body. But as the artist transcends all 
his creations, as the orator transcends all his 
speeches, as the architect transcends all his crea- 
tions, God transcends any form he may take, any 
garments in which he clothes himself, whether 
a violet, a man, a mountain, or a universe. 

We pass now to the consideration of three 
questions : How God came in the flesh, why he 
came, what effect the great fact should have on 
our lives. He came here as we came, wrap- 
ping himself in the flesh of an infant. If we 
wish a perfect illustration of the Incarnate 
God, we shall find it in our incarnate self. Man 
is a child of God, and both man and God have 
passed through identical experiences. If we 
wish to see God as he is, we must take ourselves 
as we ought to be and multiply by infinity. 
God was an incarnate spirit; so are we. He 
passed through the present world into the 
spiritual world; so do we. He was a babe 



90 God Winning Us. 

lying on the bosom of a human mother; so 
were we. He grew in body, intellect, and char- 
acter, as we do. In him were infinite love, wis- 
dom, patience, fidelity, purity, hope — all divine 
things in infinite form ; we have them in the 
germ, infinite form. "The child grew in wis- 
dom and in stature." At the first there was 
God shining through the body of an infant; as 
much of himself as infancy could reflect shone 
on the world. The Infinite Spirit of God cooed 
and prattled through the lips of a babe. Napo- 
leon, Daniel Webster, Abraham Lincoln came 
in this same manner. They slowly and nor- 
mally filled the earthly temple with themselves, 
learned to express themselves more and more 
perfectly, until at last they thrilled the world 
with their greatness. We have proceeded in 
the same manner from our earliest moments. 
We have been illuminating our bodies and 
manifesting ourselves more and more perfectly. 
There is infinitely more in us than we can ex- 
press in any way. We shall never be able to 
utter ourselves perfectly through these imper- 
fect mediums. 

So the Almighty entered human flesh and 
began to reveal himself through it. His love 
and wisdom found clearer and clearer expres- 



God Accommodating Himself To Us. 91 

sion. He began to shine through the eyes, and 
speak through the lips, and act through the 
body of the child of Nazareth, as a light placed 
in a cathedral grows brighter until the structure 
becomes resplendent. At first very little of 
himself was revealed, as a tiny flame in a cathe- 
dral dimly shines through windows and doors. 
But the light grew until his transfigured body 
glowed with ineffable radiance. The expression 
grew more perfect until, at the ascension, he de- 
clared : "All power is given unto me in heaven 
and in earth. " 

Let us contemplate this fact — that the entire 
wisdom, love, and beauty of God were not mani- 
fested in the flesh, no more than the entire 
wisdom, love, and ability of man are revealed in 
his words and acts ; no more than the entire 
harmony of the soul of Handel was uttered in 
his music, or all the mighty conceptions of 
Eaphael were seen in his pictures. As much of 
God as could be expressed in flesh was ex- 
pressed. He filled a human life as full of God 
as a human life could hold. The expression 
was perfect, so far as it went. The body is an 
instrument and, like all finite instruments, has 
its limitations. We do the best we can ; yet 
lips, gestures, eyes, tones refuse to tell all that 



92 God Winning Us. 

we desire. The heart frequently swells with an 
affection that finds extremely inadequate utter- 
ance. Thus it was with God : as much of his 
infinity as could be revealed through the Man 
of Nazareth was revealed. 

Why did God come in the flesh ? Because 
the world had come to misunderstand him, and 
he wished to show men his real nature. When 
we have been told things about some one that 
has estranged us from him, he must, by a life 
of beauty expressed in our sight, convince us of 
our mistake, and thus win our confidence. In 
other words, we must personally acquaint our- 
selves with him. God desired to reveal his true 
self to the world, and there was no other way 
to do it. If he had remained on his throne, and 
sent messages from his splendid isolation, even 
if they were borne by angels, men would not 
have believed angels. 

If we wish to win savages to civilization and 
Christianity, we must take up our abode with 
them, learn their language, customs, fears, hopes. 
If we do not do this, we can not approach them. 
If we wish to open our hearts to little children, 
we must become children ourselves ; we must 
enter into their pleasures and sorrows and em- 
ploy their childish language. If we wish to 



God Accommodating Himself To Us. 93 

teach them, we must ourselves return to the 
alphabet and lead them gradually to the place 
we occupy. We must accommodate or adapt 
ourselves to their states, conducting them through 
all grades of progression to maturity. There- 
fore, in order to touch us vitally, God had to 
become a man, stooping to our circumstances. 
He became like us that we might perceive his 
relationship, and that he might draw near to us 
in a way which we would accept. 

It is difficult for the rich to aid the poor, 
because the poor feel that they have not borne 
their hard experiences, and are unfitted to 
understand them. If God had not descended 
to the deeps of human existence, and not only 
become a man, but a poor man, — a man who 
suffered nearly every woe that flesh is heir to, — 
we should not have accepted him. I do not 
know that we could have accepted him. We 
should feel that he had not had our experiences 
and could not comprehend them. It is difficult 
for us to think that even God can understand 
without experience. 

Therefore, Jesus was God brought within 
the horizon of humanity — God taking little 
steps by our sides, that we might walk with 
him ; God talking in simple earth sentences, 



94 God Winning Us. 

that we might comprehend him. He came to 
show us his heart, to disclose his sympathy and 
relationship. When he stood by the grave that 
w T as about to cover the remains of loved beings, 
he shared the tears of the bereaved. When he 
said to the blushing woman who had sinned, 
" Neither do I condemn thee : go and sin no 
more," he showed how he loves erring mortals. 
When he became the intimate companion of 
fishermen and humble folk, he showed us how 
he stoops to the lowly and how he loves them ; 
he convinced us that there is not a shadow of 
partiality in his nature. When he permitted 
John to place his head upon his breast, he 
showed how he loves individually. When he 
commanded the storms to cease, he displayed 
his power over nature. When he spoke sternly 
to the Pharisees, he told us what he thinks of 
hypocrisy. When he took little children in his 
arms and blessed them, he revealed his affection 
for the child. 

Pie came that we might actually see God, 
handle him, and thus know him as a reality. 
He said, " Handle me and see." He became 
small, that we might look at him. Those who 
saw him saw God. We who read his earthly 
biography in the Gospels know what God 



God Accommodating Himself To Us. 95 

thought and how God acted when in the world. 
As he was then he is now. As when, through 
a window, we behold the heaven, as when in a 
mirror we see the sun reflected, in Jesus of 
Nazareth we behold God in the flesh. We do 
not speak of the mirror, or the window, when 
we see the heaven or the sun in them. We say 
we see the heaven, we see the sun ; and so in 
Jesus we say we see God. When Jesus spoke, 
when he loved, when he acted, God spoke, 
loved, acted. 

This descent, adaptation, accommodation in 
life is not something new and strange. It is 
something very practical, going on continually 
in the home, in the school, in every walk of life. 
The mother accommodates herself to her chil- 
dren, the teacher to her pupils; the wise adapt 
themselves to the ignorant, the technical scholar 
to the unsophisticated. It is a principle and 
practice prevalent everywhere. God did only 
what we are doing all the time. 

The final reason why God came in this man- 
ner was not simply that we might know him 
and understand his love and fatherhood, but 
that, knowing him, we might become like him 
in character. The teacher accommodates her- 
self to the pupil not simply that the pupil may 



96 God Winning Us. 

understand her, but that the pupil may, like 
her, become learned. The whole object is to 
make a scholar of the pupil. And God came 
ostensibly that we might become, like him, good 
and wise and great. Said he, " Be ye perfect, 
even as your father which is in heaven is per- 
fect." Aim at perfection ; strive earnestly for 
the holiness of God himself; not that we shall 
ever reach it, but it is the goal toward which 
we are to forever move. He came to make us 
like himself; he set a copy for us to reproduce. 
He came to teach us to carefully tend and culti- 
vate those divine qualities with which he has 
endowed us, that they might continually enlarge 
and increase in strength. These divinities in us 
differ from his only in degree. His are in 
maturity, ours are in the germ. And to aid us 
in our efforts to God-likeness, he took it upon 
himself to become our defense and shield. He 
descended and conquered the hells, placed all 
the powers of iniquity in subjection to himself, 
that we might never need to yield to wrong. 
If we look to him, he will ever fight for us and 
give us the victory. 



VIII. 
GOD WINNING US. 

(ATONEMENT.) 

If we divide the word atonement into sylla- 
bles, it will seem more clear in its meaning. 
Everybody understands what at-one-ment is. 
It is an agreement and harmony of li£e and 
action. When two persons are not at one with 
each other, they are in disagreement. They are 
disunited, uncongenial, misunderstand each 
other, and are likely to avoid each other. In- 
stead of being one in motive, desire, and action, 
they are distinctly two. 

Such antagonisms are cured by sacrifice — by 
manifesting unselfish interest through actual 
disinterested sacrifice of personal ease. A 
neighbor is won not by explanations or by elo- 
quent speech, but by devoted service. He is 
won by the yielding-up of life; not by actual 
outward dying, but by the death of personal 
interests. This seems to be the only possible 
manner of healing breaches and cementing 
friendships: the actual putting away of indi- 
7 97 



98 God Winning Us. 

vidual ease and merging one's life into the life 
of another. Continuous, loving, earnest, un- 
selfish sacrifices for another will finally break 
and soften the heart of flint. It is an at-one- 
ment. It brings into harmony mind, heart, 
and interests ; it makes fast and close friend- 
ships ; it welds bonds that become too strong 
to be broken ; it brings two souls together in a 
common and blessed community, as two drops 
of water which touch, commingle and compose 
a single glistening sphere. 

The old idea of atonement was radically dif- 
ferent. God was pictured as an Infinite Shy- 
lock, demanding his pound of flesh. The 
human race had angered him, and he was de- 
termined to have vengeance. He must strike 
somewhere, somebody, and as an innocent and 
plucky schoolboy, rather than see his guilty 
companion punished, steps in and suffers for 
him, so Christ substituted for the race. God 
must strike : the rod was lifted and it fell on 
the innocent shoulders of Christ. This was the 
kind of being God was pictured to be in the 
old theologies, and the world trembled before 
his wrath. 

The teaching of the New Church is radically 
and gloriously different. Instead of sending a 



God Winning Us. 99 

substitute, God came himself; it was God who 
bore our sorrows, that he might by this act of 
affection show us his heart. Instead of sitting 
afar in his comfortable heaven and sending 
messengers, he came himself, and, by suffering 
love, won our adoration and affection. In 
this manner he made an atonement for us, as 
some noble person whom we have misunder- 
stood, at last, by acts of persistent kindness, suc- 
ceeds in convincing us that his friendship is 
unfeigned. 

All at-one-ment is accomplished by sacrifice. 
Therefore, God actually suffered for us in re- 
deeming us. God is capable of suffering with 
his children just as any true parent is. No true 
parent can see his children go wrong, or suffer 
in any way, without feelings of pain. And 
God is the Great Parent, the Parent of Pa- 
rents, possessing a stronger love and sympathy 
than ever glowed in the heart of any earthly 
being. 

See how this principle works in the world 
between man and man ! There is an atonement 
constantly going on in society. Parents are con- 
tinually yielding life for children, relatives for 
relatives, friends for friends. Jesus said : " If 
I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me." 



100 God Winning Us. 

He meant that, if he gave his life for others, they 
would be convinced of his affection, and so 
drawn to his cause. In a lesser way, but on the 
same principle, this is continually being illus- 
trated among men. We draw people to ourselves 
by unselfish, sacrificing efforts. There is no 
power so great as the power of an unselfish act. 
There is no surer and quicker way of winning 
the love of people than by convincing them that 
we are endeavoring to aid them, with no thought 
of gain for ourselves. An act of unadulterated 
affection has immense potency; and, unless a 
man has a heart of stone, he will yield to its 
influences, when convinced of its genuineness. 

The mother may punish, and the child can 
defy her; there is a grim sense of enjoyment 
in that defiance. Under the stress of punish- 
ment the child can steel its little soul against 
her; but when the mother goes away and 
weeps over its conduct, it is convinced that 
she loves it; its heart is melted ; its conduct is 
changed, and it is drawn to her by ties of affin- 
ity. When she weeps, it knows she suffers ; and 
when she suffers, it knows she loves. This suf- 
fering love on her part is an effectual atonement 
for its indiscretions; it ceases its little wrongs 
and is drawn to her, united to her, at one with her. 



God Winning Us. 101 

Thus it is throughout all realms of life. A 
man may make an eloquent speech, and tell in 
glowing language how he loves and what sacri- 
fices he will endure ; how he is willing to die for 
his friends or his country ; and we are unmoved. 
We think, "All this may be true, and it may 
not be." But when he actually does die; when 
he sacrifices property, feelings, comfort, selfish 
interests, life itself — it is then w r e are convinced. 
We think that proves the truth of his assertions, 
and we are won to him and to his principles. 
" There," we think, " is a true man." 

History supports this idea. " The blood of 
the martyrs has been the seed of the church." 
The church has grown ; people have been won 
to it by its exhibitions of unselfish interest. 
The church must first convince people that its 
interests in them are unfeigned, that its sole aim 
is to help them to more happiness and a better 
existence, if it is to grow. There is no other 
possible way to win them. If the teacher is to 
win her pupils to herself and to her purpose, 
she must unite them by love and sway them by 
this power. It is infinitely stronger than the 
rod, for it induces not only outward but inward 
obedience. It is thus that she makes an at- 
one-ment for them. A minister can unite his 



102 God Winning Us. 

people, inspire them, draw them to himself, and 
thus to the cause of God, by showing them that 
he is entirely unselfish in his efforts. By his 
earnestness, his self-forgctfulness, his undying 
patience, his genuine, undiscouraged affection ; 
by placing the interests of his people above his 
own, he will win them. They themselves will 
be changed, and will, in turn, place the interests 
of others above their own and become actual 
followers of him who died for all. In this 
manner an atonement is made by the minister 
for his people. 

What name is greatest in American history? 
What name is sweetest, most revered ? What 
name thrills and inspires every loyal American ? 
Is it not the name of the martvr Abraham Lin- 
coin? By his sublime life and death he made 
an atonement for his country. We see that 
great man in the dark days of the republic, 
when we were uncertain whether we were to 
have a country or not, sweating, as it were, 
drops of blood for us. We see him pacing the 
halls of the White House, weighed down by a 
grief too deep for tears. And when the shot 
of the assassin brought his life to a tragic con- 
clusion, and ushered in his own transfigura- 
tion, a nation wept, a nation put on mourning, a 



God Winning Us. 103 

nation's heart was touched, and a nation was 
won to loyalty and unity. All men forgot their 
hostility, their criticism, their sneers, — forgot 
that they had ever done anything but honor 
him, — and placed him securely in the niche of 
eternal fame. He arose at once into a great 
figure in history — a monumental form before 
which enmity was silenced. The nation was 
cemented and sublimated by the atonement of a 
great life. 

Why is John Brown so esteemed ? Why has 
he taken so prominent a position in American 
history ? Why does his soul still " go march- 
ing on ? " Not because of any especial bril- 
liance or ability, but because of the utterly 
unselfish sacrifice of himself for his country. 
There remains in all minds the picture of the 
old man going quietly and peacefully to die, 
stooping to kiss the little negro child on the 
way, looking up at the surrounding hills and 
admiring the beauty of the scenery. Death set 
its sacred seal on his life, and his spirit became 
the leader of the nation, going before its tri- 
umphant hosts to victory. 

Why does the Maid of Orleans stand out 
of the gloom of the Middle Ages with so 
serene, so sweet, and so sublime a beauty? 



104 God Winning Us. 

She was an uneducated, superstitious French 
peasant girl. She lives because of her sacri- 
ficial life and death. When she went to 
her execution, her purity and truth had so 
touched men's hearts that a great tide of re- 
morse and pity swelled up in the souls even of 
her enemies. The rough soldiers who stood by 
her were melted to tears. From the hour of 
her death all men began to believe in her holi- 
ness and truth. 

As one of the old martyrs said just before 
the torch was lighted about him, " Have cour- 
age, my brother, for to-day we shall light a 
candle in Europe that shall never be put out." 
There is the picture of Livingstone dying in 
Africa among his negroes, the faithful savage 
followers at last wrapping his body in cloths 
and carrying it hundreds of miles in that torrid 
climate to the sea, that they might deliver it to 
his friends. Here is an illustration of the power 
of genuine love over the life, even, of savages. 
The act of life-giving is the only real power in 
the world. And it is an undying power. It is 
only this kind of an atonement that can win 
and alter conduct. 

Let us now turn to the influence of the 
Lord's life and death on the world. We have 



God Winning Us, 105 

spoken of the atonement of man for man, now 
let us speak of God's atonement for men. 
Many have misunderstood the meaning of the 
blood of Jesus. They have felt that the sacri- 
fice of Jesus was confined to the final act on 
the cross. And many have failed to be moved 
by a single day's suffering which occurred al- 
most twenty centuries ago. They have mar- 
veled that it should have been considered so 
great an event. Heroes are dying about us 
every day ; why should the death of Jesus be 
considered so especial and so crowded with 
efficacy ? 

Mighty emphasis has been placed on this 
event by the writers of the New Testament, and 
men say they can not see why. Almost every 
chapter of the Old Testament points to the 
cross of Calvary. Everywhere are index fingers 
calling attention to that crucial event. " This 
is my blood of the New Covenant that was shed 
for many for the remission of sins." " As 
Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, 
so must the Son of Man be lifted up." "I am 
the Good Shepherd, who giveth his life for his 
sheep." " He gave himself a ransom for 
many." " He washed us from our sins in his 
own precious blood." "By his stripes are we 



106 God Winning Vs. 

healed." Hundreds of similar verses could be 
quoted from every part of the Word. 

Now, what is the death of Christ to us? 
What does it do for us ? Of what practical 
use is it to us ? In reality, the death of Jesus 
was almost bloodless. Only a few drops flowed 
from his pierced hands and feet, and a little 
blood, mingled with water, from the spear wound 
in his side. The atonement of Christ was not 
confined to that single incident on Calvary, 
nor was it confined even to the three years of 
his ministry — -these were but an opening of 
his heart of sacrifice — but an exhibition of his 
nature. The cross was but the culminating 
act of a life of dying for others. When we 
constantly yield our own interests for others, we 
constantly die for them. Our entire life is an 
atonement. Such was the career of Jesus on 
earth. In the solitudes of the Dark Continent 
Livingstone asked of his own soul, " What is 
the blood of Christ?" This question came at 
the close of a life of sublime sacrifice for others 
on his own part, and fitted him peculiarly to 
answer it. He replied : " It is the love of 
God made apparent to men in his sacrificial acts ; 
it is the heart of God laid open to human eyes 
and ears." 



God Winning Us. 107 

The incident on the cross was but the closing 
scene in the whole drama of atonement. Abra- 
ham Lincoln's death in Ford's Theater was but 
the closing scene in a life yielded daily and 
yearly for others. That single act is not to be 
considered alone. We do not gather up into 
that one incident what he did for his country. 
We think of his entire noble career, and we 
think of every act as an exhibition of what he 
really was in the deeps of his being. So we 
think of the Lord. We think of his entire life 
as a sacrifice for us, as an interpretation of the 
love of God to men. 

The life of a parent given for its child is 
an accurate testimony of what he really is. We 
judge a parent by what he does for his 
child, rather than by what he says about 
him. When we continually do acts of gener- 
osity and kindness, we show everybody that we 
are generous and kind in our nature, and every- 
body trusts us. So God, in his life on earth, 
showed us his eternal nature, what he always 
was, and what he is now. And when men 
understand that, they are drawn to him. All 
Christ did was an interpretation of the nature 
of God. When he pitied others, he showed us 
how he always pities ; when he loved others, 



108 God Winning Us. 

wept with them, healed them, cheered them, fed 
them, suffered for them, died for them, he sim- 
ply exhibited the attitude of God toward the 
whole race, now and forever. 

Is God different, now he has ascended into 
the skies? His death did not change his love 
any more than the death of our friends changes 
their love. Jesus was the same dear Master 
after he arose from the tomb. We shall find 
our departed friends as dear as ever when we 
meet them. And God is the same in every 
affection and sacrifice as when on earth in the 
flesh. God is capable of suffering for his chil- 
dren. Why should this seem strange and 
doubtful ? Did he not weep over Jerusalem ? 
And was he not God then as actually as now? 
And does he not weep now over sin and suffer- 
ing? Did he not mingle his tears with the be- 
reaved at the sepulcher of Lazarus? Why, 
then, should he not do the same now? If 
God is the father of his people, he must be 
capable of suffering with them. If it were not 
so, he could not be so noble, he could not touch 
us so intimately, as an earthly father. And he 
declares : " As a father pitieth his children, so 
the Lord pitieth them that fear him." 

Now, it is this suffering sympathy of God 



God Winning Us. 109 

that draws us to hira. It is in this manner 
that he makes an atonement for us. His career 
on earth was only an illustration of what he 
always has been, is now, and ever will be. This 
is what we all wish to realize. No one can be 
drawn to the Lord and united to him, until he 
realizes this. If we are ignorant of the fact 
that some person has sacrificed for us, that sac- 
rifice has no power over us. "We can not thrill, 
or have our patriotism awakened, by the sacri- 
fices of Lincoln if we do not know that he 
made sacrifices. And so the atonement of 
Christ can not help us until we realize w T hat it 
is and what it means. This is why the subject 
is so important ; this is why it is so empha- 
sized in Scripture, and why teachers of truth 
are so anxious to explain it and make it clear. 
It is the most important teaching of the Word ; 
it is the Heart of God laid open ; it is the sole 
avenue by which men find righteousness and 
heaven. 



+~z**^m. m**^^-*- 




»*- 



IX. 
GOD OPENING OUR EYES. 

{FAITH.) 

A new conception of faith is much needed. 
Faith is frequently defined as mere opinion. A 
religion is called a faith. We inquire, " Of 
what faith are you ? " We mean by this, " To 
what church do you belong? What do you 
think in religious matters?" The peculiar 
teachings of a church are called its faith. The 
creed of a church is called the summary of its 
faith. 

But mere opinion — merely what one thinks 
— can not be true faith. If it were, one might 
have faith and be very wicked. " The devils 
believe and tremble." No one is made better 
by mere ideas. If he has high and true opin- 
ions, and leads a disgraceful life, he is the worse 
for his opinions. It is worse for him than if 
he had no opinions at all. Light is a blessing, 
if used; but "if the light that is in thee be 

darkness, how great is that darkness ! " It is 
110 



God Opening Our Eyes. Ill 

simply unpardonable to know the true and the 
beautiful, and live falsely and wickedly. 

There are persons whose opinions are wrong, 
who have erroneous ideas of God and religion, 
yet who are very exemplary in conduct. Good 
people are discovered in every religion, every 
denomination, whatever shade of opinion. There 
are good heathen, good Mormons, good Fire- 
worshipers, good Confucianists, good Theoso- 
phists, and even good Atheists. There are oth- 
ers whose opinions are right, who entertain very 
true and beautiful ideas of God and religion, 
whose lives are bad. There are bad Christians. 
There are persons who are orthodox in their 
thinking and heterodox in their acting, who 
hold high position in the church, who read and 
commend the Bible, whose theories are correct, 
and yet who ought to be in State's prison, and, 
so far as God is concerned, are criminals in heart 
and life. There are some whose opinions are 
better than their lives, and others whose lives 
are better than their opinions. A man may as- 
sent to forty creeds and have no Christianity at 
all ; he may assent to none and be a true fol- 
lower of Jesus. A correct opinion is a very 
desirable thing, for it is the light which guides 
in ways of truth. I am not belittling the value 



112 God Winning Us. 

of true opinion. I only say that a correct 
opinion is not faith. 

What, then, is faith? If it is not correct 
opinion, if it is not right ideas of truth, what 
is it? Faith is such trust in the Lord that 
the heart is changed and conduct regulated by 
it. A child may trust its father, and so love 
and trust him as to serve him earnestly and 
faithfully, and yet understand him feebly. His 
ideas of his father may be materially incorrect, 
and yet his faith be pure and implicit. For ex- 
ample, what kind of an idea can a babe a year 
old have of its mother ? Not a very scientific or 
correct one ; yet it can trust her, and it can have 
perfect faith in her. Faith is very different 
from opinion. Faith is trust in a person ; opin- 
ion is belief in intellectual statements. It is 
impossible to have faith in mere opinions. It is 
possible to have faith only in a person. A per- 
son must be the rock upon which the anchor of 
genuine faith grapples and holds fast. 

Faith is not genuine unless it leads to a true 
life. Faith is the unsealing of the vision to the 
love and goodness of God, and at the same time 
a turning of the life toward goodness and truth. 
It is not simply seeing, it is also walking. We 
may have an opinion that God is good without 



God Opening Our Eyes. 113 

having faith in his goodness. A mere opinion 
that he is good does not alter the life for the 
better; faith in his goodness implies a similar 
goodness in the exerciser of that faith. It implies 
a belief in him that transfigures character. Faith 
is a sight of the goodness of the Lord and a 
duplication of that goodness in ourselves. It is 
seeing the purity of the Lord and becoming pure 
ourselves. It is seeing the wisdom and love and 
strength of the Lord, and becoming wise and 
loving and strong ourselves. 

This kind of vision, that discovers and ap- 
propriates, becomes more transparent as faith 
proceeds. As we learn, we see more clearly. 
When we have taken one step, we can see the 
next, and can not see the next until the preced- 
ing one has been taken. Vision continually 
runs ahead of accomplishment, as the light of 
the lantern streams out before the feet, the light 
advancing only as we advance. In climbing a 
mountain, a foothill is reached; before us is 
that single foothill ; we climb to the top, and 
another one is in view. Peak after peak breaks 
on our eyes only as we advance. We must take 
the forward step to get the vision, and must get 
the vision in order to proceed. Sight and action 
interwork. The two working together in com- 
8 



114 God Winning Us. 

panionship compose genuine faith. Opinion alone 
is not faith, neither is blind action alone faith. 
" Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall 
see God." Seeing God implies being pure in 
heart. Vision and life must interwork. "If 
any man will do his will, he shall know of the 
teaching." To know he must do, and to do he 
must know. Seeing clearly implies acting 
earnestly. 

Faith, then, is the secret of progress. It is 
seeing the truth and living it. Faith on the 
material plane is not different. It does not 
confine itself to religion. It is identical in all 
fields. Columbus saw the New World by 
faith ; he had a firm conviction that there was 
a new continent over the Sea of Darkness. It 
was not a mere opinion with him, but a convic- 
tion which spread the sail and turned the prow 
toward its fair shores. There was vision and 
action — the blessed union which composes true 
faith. Morse saw the network of wires thread- 
ing the continent before a pole was set or a wire 
strung. This faith led to the tangible reality. 
Stephenson saw the steam engine before a wheel 
was built, a piston set in place, or a valve con- 
structed. Field saw the cable that virtually 
annihilated the Atlantic Ocean and linked con- 



God Opening Our Eyes. 115 

tinents in brotherly communion. Chavannes 
saw the mural paintings that adorn the walls of 
the Boston Public Library before the brush had 
drawn a line or had been dipped in color. 
Eventually vision led to action, and they now 
delight and instruct the world. Hamlet was in 
the brain of Shakspere before it was fixed 
and crystallized in paper and ink. If these 
great men had had a mere opinion, nothing 
would have been consummated. They had a 
conviction, they had a faith, and right here lies 
the secret of accomplishment. 

Religious faith is not different in principle. 
"We see the goodness of God, and become good 
ourselves. As we proceed, vision grows clearer 
and goodness more advanced. Growth in good- 
ness implies a faith (conviction) of the goodness 
of God — not a mere opinion or theory. As 
faith is the secret of material progress, it is like- 
wise the secret of spiritual progress. It is not 
merely a good feeling or a correct idea ; it is 
seeing the goodness of the Lord and making 
that goodness our own. This true vision of 
God's goodness creates inspiration and strength. 
It has the identical effect on the life that the 
sight of the New World had on Columbus. 
He became eager to step on its shores. A mere 



116 God Winning Us. 

theory or dream would have forbidden action, 
and left him in Spain. A true sight of the 
beauty of holiness incites to conquest. The 
difficulty with many persons is that they have 
an opinion only ; and a mere opinion has no 
warmth, no inspiration, no motor power. It 
stands like an unfired engine on the track. 
Genuine faith is seeing the love and wisdom of 
the Lord — as Columbus saw America, as Morse 
saw the electric lines, as Edison saw the 
machine that would thresh to pieces mountains 
of iron, as Nansen saw the vessel that would 
conquer the crushing ice mountains of the 
North. It was a conviction with these men ; it 
was not a weakly theory, a mere idea, but a 
conviction ; and conviction is but another 
word for conquest. 

Let us now turn to a more careful considera- 
tion of faith in the Lord — the rock that holds 
the anchor of life in all storms. As has been 
said, faith, to be genuine, is trust in God the 
Father — not in some statements concerning 
him. There is no such thing as faith in an ab- 
straction. We can not have faith in heroism 
without a hero back of it. There is no abstract 
heroism. Faith in purity must imply faith in 
some person who is pure. Faith in love, or 



God Opening Our Eyes. Ill 

goodness, or wisdom, implies some person who 
is loving, good, w T ise. Yie can assent to a 
proposition ; we can have faith only in an 
actuality. 

Therefore, goodness in us implies faith in the 
goodness of the Good God. The sole avenue 
to peace, satisfaction, contentment, is faith in 
the peace, satisfaction, and contentment of God. 
This faith is to the soul what the sun is to the 
flowers — light and life. It causes them to spring 
skyward and assume forms of beauty. When 
the sun rises, the day opens. When God 
shines on the spirit (by faith), the spirit is trans- 
figured and made beautiful by light and love. 
Without it the soul is left in coldness and dark- 
ness and barrenness. A chill and gloom en- 
shroud it. The grass turns gray and the glory 
departs from the flowers. 

It is when we drop the anchor of faith in 
God that we strike something that holds. Drop 
the anchor upon a creed, a statement of truth, 
an opinion, a theory, and the first storm tears 
it away. These will not hold the life firm. Let 
it grapple the rock of faith in God, the im- 
mutable basis of all truth and life, and, taking 
hold on that eternal fastness, it stands forever. 

Faith in God is the transparent trust of the 



118 God Winning Us. 

child. Faith (which implies love) casts out 
fear. He who is afraid of God does not per- 
fectly trust him. Perfect trust banishes fear. 
Fear of God implies a mere opinion about him, 
not trust in him. A child that trusts its father 
has no fear of him ; for it has perfect confi- 
dence in him, though it may have very little 
opinion of him. Though it knows little about 
him, it would unhesitatingly trust its life in his 
hands. 

So faith in God means entire absence of fear. 
It means direct access to his presence. The 
child does not seek its father in a circuitous 
way. When it wishes to speak to him, it does 
not go to some book he has written, nor to some 
brother or sister whom it supposes is a favorite, 
nor to some picture of its father, or something 
its father has made. It runs naturally to him, 
climbs into his arms, and tells him all its diffi- 
culties and delights. Genuine faith in God is 
of this nature. We do not need to go to God 
at second hand; we may go to him for our- 
selves. We may have immediate access to his 
presence. He has no favorites — no priest, no 
system of doctrine, no theories, no creeds need 
interpose themselves between us and him. We 
may drop our anchor within the veil and lay 



God Opening Our Eyes. 119 

hold on God for ourselves. Genuine faith places 
every person in the " high and lofty place " with 
God himself, and presents him with an indi- 
vidual Saviour. 

We need this living faith. We need confi- 
dence in God as one with whom we can talk 
face to face. We need to feel him near us in 
our lives, guiding all things well, in the mid- 
night of sorrow as in the sunshine of trium- 
phant joy. We need to be converted to the 
simple trust of the child. " Except ye be con- 
verted and become as a little child " — as a little 
child of the Heavenly Father, living continu- 
ally in his presence and smile, so that he is our 
best and most confidential friend — "ye can not 
see the kingdom of God." This faith will lend 
us new strength and power every day. It will 
quiet our struggles, still our unrest, irradiate 
the spirit with light, comfort us in pain and 
trouble, and lighten and dispel loneliness. This 
is what the Lord meant when he said : " If I go 
away, I will come again unto you." " Lo, I am 
with you alway." "Peace I leave with you; 
my peace give I unto you." " Not as the world 
giveth give I unto you." " Let not your heart 
be troubled, neither let it be afraid." 

If a child is in trouble and goes to its father, 



120 God Winning Us. 

the father helps it. It trusts its father enough 
to go to him. If we believe in God, let us 
act as though we did. If we claim him as a 
father, all-wise and all-loving, let us live up 
to our claims. If we do not act thus, our be- 
lief is not a faith ; it is but an opinion. Faith 
in God is not a mere assertion or confession ; it 
is an action. Action is the test of life. To 
claim to believe in an all- wise, all-loving, all- 
pure, all-powerful being — a being who knows 
all our wants, and is able to satisfy them — and 
then to live as though there were no such be- 
ing, is irrational. 

So soon as we begin thus to act, thus to trust, 
thus to walk with God, vision becomes clearer 
and trust increases. As we climb the heights 
of God toward the heaven of his love and wis- 
dom, enthusiasm and strength enlarges. We 
begin to discover that he is really near us. We 
arise into a loftier and serener atmosphere, 
above the low-lying fogs, where the sun always 
shines, and the dust and struggle of time is felt 
no more. 



. 2 X . 

(J \ (el XT) / CV 



fffT 



GOB GEO WING IN US. 

(REGENERA TIOX. ) 

The old theory was that man was born de- 
praved, and that the Lord came in answer to 
prayer, and suddenly changed him into a saint. 
The teaching of the New Church is exactly the 
opposite — that man is born an angel ; that the 
germinant, or incipient, angel is within his 
heart; and, as in the spring the sun of the uni- 
verse stoops and warms to life the seed, God 
broods over and awakes this angel in men, caus- 
ing it to expand in beauty. 

Take a handful of seeds of various colors, 
shapes, and sizes, and how unpromising they 
look ! It does not seem possible that the beau- 
tiful leaves and blossoms of the sweet pea can 
emerge from the dry, withered, and uncouth 
kernel. Gaze upon a handful of flower seeds, 
and it does not seem possible that they will fill 
the garden with beauty ; that they will lade the 
air with sweet and rare odors. Can it be that 
121 



122 God Winning Us. 

within the dry and thorny chestnut burr lies a 
stately tree that is to bless the generations with 
its shadow? Yet by actual experiment we 
know this is true. It is a miracle so ordinary 
that we have ceased to wonder. The unhand- 
some and withered seed has this hidden loveli- 
ness and power, secreted there by the Divine 
Hand, only waiting for development. How is 
it awakened (or regenerated)? How is its 
beautiful life set in motion ? We may keep it 
a century, isolated from sun and soil, and its 
powers will lie in slumber. But give it the con- 
ditions of growth — soil, sunlight, heat, showers 
— and instantly it starts up, and its shoots ap- 
pear above the soil, rising heavenward. 

We are exactly like this. As the seed is a 
born flower, we are born angels. There is 
within us the sacred image of God, only wait- 
ing to take form. What it needs is propitious 
conditions. Keep the seed from the soil, 
and it will not grow. Pry open the frozen 
earth with a crowbar, and plant it out of sea- 
son, and it will not grow. Proper conditions 
must be vouchsafed. Exactly so is it with the 
divine life in men. It must have right conditions. 
The love and light of God must fall upon it^ 
and it must find soil stored with nutriment. 



God Growing In Vs. 123 

Turn to another figure, perhaps better suited 
to illustrate this idea. Every one knows what 
is meant by a born musician or artist. It is a 
common expression among us that certain per- 
sons are born musicians, artists, mechanics, 
writers, poets. By this it is meant that the gift 
is inherited from the forefathers. It may have 
been acquired by jumping backward several 
generations to some ancestor with similar gifts. 
The talent is occasionally discovered in early 
childhood. Mozart went into spasms when 
some one struck discordant notes on the piano. 
Handel used to steal out of bed and play all 
night on the old harpsichord in his father's 
attic. It does not seem as though the weak 
and aimless fingers of the infant can ever work 
miracles on the keyboard. It does not seem as 
though the dimpled arm, thrust out in so pur- 
poseless a manner, can ever wield the brush of 
the immortal painter. Yet it is true. There 
lie Beethoven, and Handel, and Raphael, in the 
germ. Like the spark in the seed, like the 
angel in the heart, only waiting for inspiration 
and drill to bring it to loveliness and fruition. 
Without these conditions it must lie quiescent 
forever. The incipient pianist can never de- 
velop without an instrument for practice, with- 



124 Ood Winning Us. 

out a master to inspire, any more than the seed 
can become a flower without soil and sun. 

Now the musician or artist is in the begin- 
ning a born musician or artist. The gift lies 
there waiting to develop, and, as soon as the 
propitious conditions are vouchsafed, it is awak- 
ened, or regenerated. It is set forth on its 
career of advancement. Just so every one has 
the gift of angelhood waiting for the proper 
environment to set it in motion. Angelhood is 
a universal gift. It is in every soul ; yet if it 
is not given opportunity it slumbers. And it 
happens that in millions of lives opportunities 
are denied, either by wilful neglect or by the 
force of circumstances. This accounts for the 
vast number of persons who appear to have no 
goodness in them at all. They are like the 
seed before it is placed in the soil, or the artist 
before he has found the brush, the colors, and 
the master. 

The fact that this gift, or power, of goodness 
is within the soul, placed there in the begin- 
ning by the Creator, should be emphasized. It 
is not a later creation, as the old theologies have 
asserted. It is there, and ever has been there, 
as truly as the life has been ever in the seed, or 
the gift in the soul of the musician. What is 



God Growing In Us. 125 

needed is not life, but the conditions to develop 
life. The ancient idea that people were born 
bad, and a new life was placed in them at con- 
version, is fallacious. The work of God in re- 
generation is not an outside work. It is not a 
garment of righteousness cast about the sinner. 
The leper can not hide his disease by a regal 
dress. Righteousness is not something con- 
ferred instantly. Men are not made instant 
angels by an act of prayer. 

Holiness proceeds like growth — slowly and 
through prolonged processes. The angel in the 
seed, and in the soul, proceeds on an identical 
principle. The new life in the acorn is entirely 
different from the rest of it ; the kernel and 
the shell are left behind to decay and death ; 
the envelope is discarded ; that part of the 
acorn which is seen and held in the hand is 
the part which is to be cast away ; that which 
is to rise is invisible, intangible, without bulk 
or weight ; it is the unseen, immaterial part 
which rises into the tree. That which becomes 
beautiful and living is the angel in the shell. 
It is the inner life which develops, planted 
there by the Almighty Love and Power. 

As if to impress us with this truth, the Lord 
reiterates it by millions of illustrations. Every 



126 God Winning Us. 

blade of grass retells the story. Every daisy, 
every violet, every shrub, continually states 
this beautiful truth, whether we listen or not. 
The butterfly retells it when it emerges from 
the unsightly worm. The robin retells it when 
it breaks the shell and takes wing. The worm 
and the egg are discarded and left behind. 
Crush the worm and you will find no butterfly ; 
break the egg and you will find no bird ; yet 
they are both there in the invisible state. Let 
the surgeon dissect the heart of man, and he will 
find no angel ; yet it is there, with folded wings 
and hidden loveliness. 

In the husband, the wife, the child, the friend, 
is the angel of holiness waiting for development. 
In many it is as little apparent as the flower in 
the seed ; yet it is surely there, secreted by the 
dear Lord himself. We become truly prophetic 
when we say, " There is good in every one, even 
the very worst." 

What occurs when the angel begins to de- 
velop? That which is not angel is put away. The 
bad is discarded, as the acorn discards the kernel. 
The expansion of the new life leaves behind the 
old life. Old habits, passions, hankerings, tem- 
pers, vanities, jealousies, are crowded out by the 
divine things which take their places. The new 



God Groiving In Us. 127 

man is born out of the old man. What a chasm 
stretches between the canary and the egg, the 
primrose and the seed, the novice and the accom- 
plished musician ! This is regeneration — the 
emergence of the new out of the old; the develop- 
ment of the good until the evil is all put away, 
and nothing remains but the holy and beautiful. 
Just how is this accomplished in a practical 
manner? Many feel that they are helpless in 
this matter of regenerating themselves. They 
are waiting for God to come and do it. They 
do not realize that they must cooperate with 
God. The gardener has something to do as 
well as God. God furnishes sun, soil, and 
show r ers; the gardener, a hoe, some muscle, and 
action. The seed must be placed in the soil, 
and the intruding weeds removed. Millions of 
people are slumbering religiously, simply be- 
cause they will make no effort. They are like 
the farmer waiting for God to make the har- 
vest. Millions will not cooperate with God. 
They will not attend church, read the Bible, or 
place themselves under good influences. They 
are like the seed in the original package on the 
high shelf. It will never develop there. Mil- 
lions will not give the angel in them an oppor- 
tunity. If they would only get into the sun- 



128 God Winning Us. 

shine of the love of God, how they would 
expand ! But they studiously avoid it. When 
a person places himself under good influences, 
there is an almost immediate change. Let him 
go to church, read his Bible, pray, and study 
the great and noble books, instead of newspa- 
per scandals and horrors ; let him get into the 
sunlight and into the soil, and see what will 
happen. 

Turn again to the figure of innate gifts. 
Some one has a born aptitude for music. How 
practically does he develop that angel of har- 
mony ! Will God descend and make him an 
expert, with no effort on his part? Neither 
will he make any progress if he studiously 
avoid the inspiration of musical circles, the 
routine of study and drill. What is the sensi- 
ble course ? He places himself under a master. 
He eagerly seizes every opportunity to develop 
his gift. He seeks musical geniuses. He drills 
assiduously. At the outset it is tedious, it is 
irksome ; but he compels himself. If he re- 
fused to cooperate with God, his fingers would 
never become skilful. Under self-compelled 
drill he is being born anew; the divine life 
of harmony is becoming more and more com- 
plete. The angel of music is attaining pro- 



God Growing In Us. 129 

portion. The old clumsiness is being cast out, 
as the sculptor casts out the encompassing 
marble until the immortal figure is revealed. 
He is discarding everything that is not harmo- 
nious, everything that hinders. At last it is all 
gone, and he is the incarnation of melody. He 
handles the keys without effort. It is no longer 
a task, but a pleasure, for him to play. In art, 
in mechanics, in typewriting, in wheeling, in 
every accomplishment this beautiful law works. 
Clumsiness passes into facility by cooperation 
with God. 

Precisely in this way is the heavenly life 
developed. We are born angels — born with 
the good life lying at the heart. The chief 
difficulty is that men do not care to take the 
trouble to develop that divine life, or they do 
not care deeply enough to make the effort. 
They will not compel themselves to practice 
good habits, as they will compel themselves to 
practice music. There are persons with great 
natural gifts too lazy to develop them. Others 
with half their endowments accomplish more 
by pluck and tenacity of purpose. Millions 
are too indolent to drill themselves in goodness. 
They will not take the trouble to read a good 
book, or even go across the street to a religious 
9 



130 God Winning Us. 

meeting. They will toil patiently from morning 
to evening, from Monday to Saturday, for 
American dollars; but they will not practice 
the Christian graces for a single hour. In the 
religious field their will seems to entirely col- 
lapse. It is as weak as water. On Sunday 
morning they find themselves entirely unable 
to arise from their beds and make ready for 
church; but on Monday morning "a change 
comes o'er the spirit of their dream." They 
are then ready for the most arduous duties. 
They have the courage to endure the terrors 
of the Klondike hunt for gold, but little cour- 
age to be true, honest, loving, pure, faithful. 
Their feet are swift and strong to run in the 
ways of pride, and selfishness, and worldly am- 
bition ; but how tardily they step heavenward ! 
If the gardener expects a crop, he expects to 
cooperate with the Lord ; he expects to toil 
and sweat. The crops of the Spirit require a 
similar cooperation. The Lord will no more 
make a man unselfish without effort on his 
part than he will give him a crop of wheat 
without effort. He will no more make a woman 
pure without her cooperation than he will make 
her a skilful cook without her cooperation. It 
takes certainly as much toil and drill to make 



Ood Growing In Us. 131 

an angel as to make an artist. The principle is 
identical in both fields, and it is therefore easy 
for us to determine precisely how practically to 
set to work. 

And it follows that this new life is not a sud- 
den thing. Acorns do not spring into oaks in 
a day; worms do not become butterflies in an 
instant; artists and musicians do not acquire 
facility and skill in a year ; — these processes are 
slow and of painful duration. Birth and growth 
to manhood or womanhood cover twenty years. 
"First the blade, then the ear, and at last the 
full corn in the ear." We must not get dis- 
couraged at tardy processes. It is perfectly 
natural that it should be so. It is not reasona- 
ble to look for sudden flights of progress ; yet 
this lesson never seems to fasten itself in the 
human mind and heart. It is true that we do 
continually look for quick and great results. 
If we could realize the laws of growth in the 
good life, we should be more patient. If it 
requires a lifetime to become a tolerable scholar, 
how long ought it to take to become a saint ? 
Infinitely longer, of course, for it is infinitely 
greater. Things proceed in the ratio of their 
greatness. The mushroom springs up in a night; 
the cedar of Lebanon requires a thousand 



132 God Winning Us. 

years. Ought not the soul of man, created in 
the image of the Almighty, — the vastest thing 
that God has constructed, — to move slowly to its 
culminating glory ? Let us endeavor to realize 
this tremendous truth, — that holiness of life 
does not proceed without our individual and 
strenuous effort, and that its processes are ex- 
ceedingly slow. 



~ w ^°^E° ~Ps^#~*~ 



XT. 



GOD ACTING THROUGH US. 

{RELIGION.) 

What is it to be truly religious ? There are 
several answers. It is said by some that to be 
truly religious is to think correctly; to have 
high and sacred ideas ; to have true views of 
God, and human conduct, and human destiny. 
But there may be right thinking and wrong 
acting. It is possible to have a lucid plan 
of theology — to be what is called orthodox; 
to be correct about the Trinity, and the Bible, 
and modes of worship, and even of human 
conduct — and yet be a veritable knave. 

Others have thought of religion as consisting 
of a grand and perfect system of worship. A 
rich and noble liturgy has often taken the place 
of vital religion. This was the religion of the 
Pharisees. It was church -going, chanting 
Scripture, reading prayers, singing hymns. But 
one may do this to the point of perfection and 
live an iniquitous life. Many follow these 
133 



134 God Winning Us. 

things faithfully who have very little of the 
spirit of Christ. The men who crucified the 
Saviour, the inquisitors of the Middle Ages 
who tortured and burned those who could not 
believe exactly as they did, were scrupulous in 
their methods and times of worship. A church 
organization is not religion. It is simply a 
band of men and women united for the pur- 
poses of promoting religion. There are many 
persons in the church very zealous in sustaining 
it who are not truly religious. 

What, then, is religion ? It is the simplest 
thing in the world — the simplest to understand 
and the most difficult to perform. It is so 
simple that the least sophisticated can compre- 
hend it — so simple that the smallest child can 
understand it as easily as the adult; so simple 
that the " wayfaring man, though a fool, need 
not err therein." It is simply a good life. " All 
religion relates to life, and the life of religion is 
to do good." A religion that does not produce 
a pure, loving, wise, and honest life can not be 
a true religion. Whatever else it may be, it is 
not the religion of God. " If ye love me, keep 
my commandments" — live them out in daily 
life. Do not simply commit them to memory, 
simply make them your code and creed, simply 



God Acting Through Us. 135 

think them ; but keep them ! Therefore, true 
religion is not correct thinking merely, not 
merely outward worship, merely church-mem- 
bership or church-organization; it is a life of 
rectitude, of honesty, of purity, of love, of high 
and godlike deeds. We are to judge of 
another's religion not by his denominational 
proclivities, his prayers, his words, his views; 
but by his conduct. The life, and the life 
alone, is the final test. 

And if religion relates to life, it relates to all 
life. It does not concern mere phases of it. It 
should be carried into all life, not simply a 
part of it. It was once thought, and is now by 
some, that religion can not be playful and joyous. 
It belongs as much to play as to labor ; as much 
to mirth as to prayer. It w r as once considered 
irreligious to laugh. Asceticism was deemed 
religious, and relaxation vain and even wicked. 
Religion was once the enemy of all comfort. 
Religionists retired from society and hid in caves 
and monasteries, half starved themselves, tor- 
tured and lacerated their bodies, robed them- 
selves in coarse garments, and slept upon the 
hard earth. There is still a little left of this 
long-faced type of religion, the religion of som- 
berness and gloom, a religion destitute of the 
natural and the beautiful. 



136 God Winning Us. 

The New Church teaches that religion relates 
to all life. Everything that is right is religious. 
To be irreligious is simply to do that which is 
not right. If it is right to eat, sing, laugh, 
dress, romp in the beautiful world, exult under 
the clear sky amid the flowers, and do a thou- 
sand other lovely things, — if these are right, 
they are religious. It is certain that our Saviour 
did all these, and he was the one perfectly 
religious being. Religion is all-round health. 
To keep the body, mind, and spirit sound, and 
clean, and pure, and joyous, is to be truly reli- 
gious. At the proper hour it is as religious to 
play as to pray ; as proper to go to the halls of 
pleasure as to the temple of worship. Jesus did 
all these, and his was the one model human 
career. 

There are two kinds of dissipation — eccle- 
siastical and worldly. There may be dissipa- 
tion in religious meetings ; there may be too 
much religious work, in the technical sense. 
There are persons who give all their time to 
religious meetings, to the neglect of every-day 
duties and to the detriment of their health. 
This is irreligious religion. Others give all 
their time to amusement. Both are irreligious 
because both are unbalanced. Their lives are 



God Acting Through Us. 137 

wrong lives because they are one-sided lives. 
The truly religious career is sane and balanced. 
It is irreligious to either play too much or pray 
too much. The balanced life has a time for 
everything. It is irreligious to live in a single 
story of our being, to harp on a single string of 
existence. 

Religion is three-fold : it is physical, men- 
tal, and spiritual. Physical religion is to keep 
the body sweet, sound, pure, alert, always at its 
best. " Ye are the temples of the Holy Spirit" 
— you are the house where the All-Pure and 
the All-Lovely dwells; therefore honor it. 
Mental religion is to cultivate the mind. It is 
the endeavor to bring it to its highest powers. 
It is to be intellectually sane and balanced. 
Spiritual religion is to keep the heart tender, 
holy, hopeful, and strong. He who neglects 
any one of these is irreligious. Some give their 
entire attention to the body ; others to the intel- 
lect ; still others to the heart. A sound body 
with an uncultivated mind and heart is beastly. 
A learned mind with a puny and neglected 
body and a bad heart is vicious. A pure heart 
with a weak and shallow intellect and a body 
strung to weakness and pain, a body unwashed, 
unexercised, and neglected, is nearly impotent 



138 God Winning Us. 

for good. It is the equal cultivation of these 
three, this sacred trinity in man, that makes the 
truly religious career. Jesus was all these ; he 
was holy in every department of his being. 
The truly religious are, as Revelation says, 
"foursquare " — the height, depth, and length are 
equal. It is the symmetrical life that is truly 
religious. 

Therefore religion is not spasmodic, not fluc- 
tuating, not something ordained for set times 
and places. It is simply right living ; and all 
living, whether work, play, or worship, should 
be right living. It is as religious to sleep, 
when sleep is needful, as to play or labor when 
play or labor is needful. To be sure, the re- 
ligious life has its phases, as all life has. It 
has its morning, noontide, evening, and mid- 
night; its spring and summer, autumn and win- 
ter. It is not a continual glare of radiance; 
it is normal and natural. There are days of 
clouds and tempests — days when faith suffers a 
slight eclipse; days when life is not quite so 
joyous. I suspect this will be the case in 
heaven. I do not suppose heaven will be a 
monotonous, steady, unrelieved glare of light. 
There will be times when growth is not evi- 
dent. The tree and the boy have spells of 



God Acting Through Us. 139 

arrested development; } T et all is natural, and 
both are normally progressing toward maturity. 
The religious life, when truly religious, is per- 
fectly natural. It is perfect health and full de- 
velopment. It is tripartite in its nature — it is 
laborious, it is prayerful, it is playful. 

There is another thing — true religion has 
nothing of the superstitious or mystical about 
it. To be sure, there is mystery in all life. If 
there were not, there could be no progress ; for 
mystery means simply that which we have not 
yet learned. If there were nothing mysterious, 
there could be nothing more to learn. But 
physical life is as mysterious as spiritual life. 
We know no more about electrical influences 
than spiritual influences. The wind is as un- 
seen and fathomless as the influence of God on 
the heart. But religion is perfectly clear and 
understandable, and no mystery about it, in the 
sense of its being a right and godlike life. 
Genuine religion is to do right; and every one 
knows what it is to do right; for if he follows 
right as he comprehends it, that, even if it were 
fundamentally wrong, would be right for him. 
Error is not sin ; mistake is not sin ; only that 
which is done in clear light can be sin. The 
holiest of persons blunder ; only the wicked sin. 



140 God Winning Us. 

Therefore, religion is seeking to know the 
right and performing it to the best of one's 
ability. This is perfectly simple and plain. 
The inner monitor is ever faithful, and informs 
instantly when boundaries are transgressed. If 
religion is following faithfully what we con- 
ceive to be right, there can be no mystery about 
it. We do not need to learn a great deal before 
we can be religious. Wisdom and knowledge 
are not synonymous words. The tiniest child 
has its simple code of morals. It has a distinct 
realization of what it ought and ought not to 
do. Let a man or woman do what seems to 
him right, and no one can be more religious 
than that. Let him follow his clearest light, 
and an archangel can do no more. To continu- 
ally seek to know the right, and to continually 
strive to live it out, is the very summit and 
crown of the religious career. To do that is to 
become an angel this side the tomb. 

There is no necessity of swallowing vast and 
complicated confessions of faith, of fathoming 
ecclesiastical subtleties, wrestling with ancient 
philosophies, and comprehending sacred techni- 
calities. One has only to do right, so far as 
the way is clear ; only to be honest, and fair, 
and pure, and sympathetic. Who does not 



God Acting Through Us. 141 

know how to do that ? It is simply looking to 
God, as the child looks to its father, and doing 
one's best. Let every word and act be honest, 
that is all. " I am the Good Shepherd : my 
sheep know my voice, and follow me." 

Congregations used to be told they must 
believe what they could not comprehend, or be 
damned for it. But the religious life is not a 
set of theories or opinions : it is an act ; it is 
not simply believing something : it is following 
Somebody. The lambs can follow the shepherd 
as faithfully as the sheep. And if it happens 
that one of them has weak legs, or finds a 
chasm too broad for it to jump, the shepherd 
takes it in his bosom and carries it over. 
Children as well as adults can follow Christ. 
Frequently their faith is clearer and their con- 
duct better. It is certain that their lives are more 
innocent and freer from guile. If any one lives 
up to his best light, God will not permit him 
to suffer injury or loss. He will carry him in 
his arms over all impassable difficulties. 

The New Church teaches that the essentials 
of religion are the Fatherhood of God and the 
brotherhood of man. The sum and essence of 
religion is to love the Lord with all the heart, 
mind, soul, and strength, and the neighbor as 



142 God Winning Us. 

one's self; "on these two commandments hang 
all the law and the prophets." The entire 
Bible is gathered up into this wonderful sen- 
tence. The whole of religion is crystallized in 
this pregnant statement. All the religions of 
time, all the vast and mystic volumes that 
crowd the libraries of the earth, are but an 
amplification of this divine utterance. The 
theologies have never gotten beyond it, and 
never will. Write this sentence in your life 
and you have written there the religion of God 
himself. The entire Word, from the opening 
verses of Genesis to the last " amen " of the 
Revelation, lies easily within the parenthesis of 
this fathomless and ringing proposition. 

This is the creed of the New Church. Where 
is there another so simple, so true, so grand ? 
The creed of the New Church was composed 
by the Saviour himself. " On it," he says, 
u hang all the law and the prophets." It is 
the keystone that binds the arch of reve- 
lation; it is the pearl of great price about which 
all the gems of truth are grouped. It does 
not seem as though any one could, for an 
instant, hesitate to accept this creed. Right 
here are all the lofty precepts of time collected 
and compacted. 



God Acting Through Us. 143 

What does it mean ? To love God is to keep 
his commandments. No one can love God who 
does not live a good life. If we do not do this, 
our Christianity is a delusion. It has no foun- 
dation in actuality. Neither can we love God 
if we do not love our neighbor. The old 
religions pretended to love God and hate men. 
A favorite maxim was, " Thou shalt love God 
and hate thine enemy." The religion of Jesus 
taught that it was impossible to love God and 
not at the same time love all men — even the 
enemy. Jesus also taught that love to God 
was love to man ; we serve God by serving our 
fellows. This was religion in action, and there 
is no religion that is not in action. " Inasmuch 
as ye have done it unto one of the least of 
these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." 
This was the religion of the Master himself. 
" He went about doing good." He went 
about healing, cheering, comforting, forgiving 
sins. The last test of a religion is service to 
men. Find a person who neglects this, and, 
though he have the erudition of Plato, the 
saintliness of John, the energy of Luther, the 
sweetness of Phillips Brooks, he has not the 
religion of Christ. Whatever he may profess, 
he is not the possessor of Christianity. Who 



144 God Winning Us. 

ever he may follow, it can not be the Saviour. 
Set that statement right down in your heart, 
for it is eternally true that love to men is love 
to God. This is the essential of religion : " On 
these two commandments hang all the law 
and the prophets." 

What is love to men? It is not a maudlin 
love. It is not a love that excuses and coddles. 
It does not consist in always saying pleasant 
things. To love any one truly is to love him 
well enough to do what is best for him ; it is 
not always to do what will please him. George 
MacDonald says, " Nothing is inexorable but 
love." There is the severity, as well as the gen- 
tleness, of Jesus. To love truly is to occasion- 
ally speak plainly and severely. To love truly 
is to love enough to punish when punishment 
will be best. True love sometimes requires 
us to place our neighbor in prison — to place 
the ban of companionship upon him. God 
does this. He will have no one in heaven 
who is selfish and wicked. Love seeks not 
to perpetuate the vagrant and the renegade by 
feeding and coddling him, but rather by firm 
and loving coercion to make a man of him. 
Love is obliged to frame laws that incarcerate 
and scourge; laws that seem, to the one who 



God Acting Through Us. 145 

feels their sting, cruel and unbrotherly. Jesus 
loved the Pharisees well enough to scathe them 
with the lightnings of his holy indignation. 
He loved them well enough to speak severely 
and plainly. He was both stern and gentle, 
yet always infinitely loving. 




10 



^I^w 



XII. 

GOD CABIN G FOE US. 

{PROVIDENCE.) 

The most blessed gospel that the New Church 
has to bring to the world is the gospel of the 
Divine Providence : that the Lord is every in- 
stant with his children, in the closest and most 
affectionate manner, guiding them through life, 
shielding them from danger, overruling the 
mistakes and sins of themselves and others, 
seeking to make them as happy as they can be 
and will permit themselves to be. 

Almost everybody fails to realize this. It 
quite often does not seem as though it could be. 
Many feel as though they were in isolation, 
walking in the dark ; and, if they are to be safe 
and successful, must become the guide and ar- 
biter of their own destiny. That a minute and 
affectionate Providence is beside them in the 
night and the day, in sickness and health, in 
fortune and loss, they fail to realize. They fail 
to realize it because they connect Providence 
with what they call the fortunes of life, and 
146 



God Caring For Us. 147 

because God's presence is invisible to fleshly 
eyes. 

JRevelation tells us that, if we were to open 
our spiritual eyes at any moment, we should see 
angels. God makes suggestions to us and to 
others; he sets hidden forces in motion that 
rule our lives ; and it seems to us that we think 
these things and put them into action. A sug- 
gestion comes to us, and we obey it, and do not 
always trace it to the Lord. Innumerable forces 
and circumstances play upon our lives and in- 
fluence them, and we do not trace them to the 
Lord. We are under the illusion that we origi- 
nate them. A little suggestion comes to men 
that turns the whole current of their being, and 
frequently the current of history. The turn in 
the tide of affairs is usually credited to some 
earthly source. We need to realize that, while 
we seem to be following our own ways, we are 
actually following God's ways — perhaps un- 
willingly. Sometimes he lures us along ; some- 
times he blocks a dangerous path, opens ways 
we had not thought of, focuses this or that wind 
of circumstance upon us ; and, with them all, at 
last wafts us into the haven of his desire. 

It will comfort and encourage us if we can 
realize that there is no such thing as a blind 



148 God Winning Us. 

and cruel chance. To become the sport of a 
heartless and cruel fate is terrible to contem- 
plate. Many exist with this nemesis pursuing 
them. When death strikes, it seems blind and 
unguided — like lightning, hitting wherever it 
may happen. The New Church teaches that 
the Lord takes our friends at the propitious 
moment. They are not the sport of accident. 
Every life has a definite plan. The years and 
moments of every living soul are numbered. 
In his invisible and marvelous way God is 
working out our destiny. He holds the forces 
of nature in his hands, and also the forces of 
mind and heart. While he does not alter his 
laws nor abrogate them, he frequently pits one 
against the other. 

When a tree or plant rises in the teeth of 
gravitation, God does not abrogate the law 
of gravitation; he only pits against it the 
stronger law of growth, and overcomes it. 
This shows what the Lord can do. It shows us 
that he can work in the face of inexorable law, 
and yet honor it ; it shows us how he can over- 
come his laws in special cases, and yet not break 
them. In this manner he saves us out of acci- 
dent. He puts into our minds suggestions that 
turn us away from dangerous courses. How 



God Caring For Us. 149 

often is a plan suddenly deranged by a call in 
another direction ! Who made the call ? who 
turned the tide of intention? God has millions 
of ways of guiding and protecting us. This is 
the minute Providence we hear so much about. 
Shakspere says : " There is a special Provi- 
dence in the fall of a sparrow." Longfellow, 
in his " Golden Legend, " says : " Nothing with 
God can be accidental." Every thought, every 
circumstance, every breath of nature or spirit 
that touches us is an influence and purpose. 
We are told that even the hairs of our head are 
numbered. 

It is usually realized that what seem to us 
great and wise occurrences are special provi- 
dences. It is easy to see the hand of God in 
great things, but it is difficult to see it in little 
things. We realize that Grant and Lincoln 
were instruments of God, but fail to see the 
same hand working in the lives of the humblest 
citizens. With God there is nothing great, 
nothing small. One person is no more his 
instrument than another ; one event is as im- 
portant as another — not special, but all, events 
and persons are providences. God is not a 
partial God. He will not guide Washington, 
and leave us to our fate. If a chain were let 



150 God Winning Us. 

down from heaven with links of many sizes, it 
would be as disastrous when the smallest link 
broke as when the largest broke. One would 
sever the chain as surely as the other. The 
smallest would be as necessary as the largest. So, 
each person and event is as needful to the chain 
of Providence as another. The Lord has a defi- 
nite purpose in view : it is to build up from 
this race a heaven of angels, and nothing shall 
swerve him from his purpose. Each, whether 
he will or not, shall contribute to this end. 

The New Church teaches the law of permis- 
sions. Certain things are allowed, though God 
does not approve of them. He allows wicked- 
ness, else there could not be wickedness ; yet he 
does not approve of it. He allows it because 
he wishes to leave us in freedom. He allows 
it because he can not force the will and at the 
same time leave the will free. He permits ac- 
cidents that we may learn the nature of law 
and learn to obey it. The child would never 
learn the nature of fire if fire did not burn. 
When fire burns, it looks carefully into it and 
respects it. Suffering is our best teacher and 
greatest blessing. God turns accidents and dis- 
appointments and sorrows into messengers of 
good. He does not want them here, and 



God Caring For Us. 151 

some day they will not be ; but at present he 
uses them for good. The mariner does not 
want contrary winds; but, having them, he 
catches them in his sails and forces them to 
what they would not. 

Sooner or later, everything serves God's pur- 
pose. He even makes the " wrath of man to 
praise him." He turned the very obstinacy of 
Pharaoh into a blessing to Israel. Pharaoh's 
very cruelty drove them through the wilderness 
into the Promised Land, and built them into a 
mighty nation that turned the course of history. 
The blind stubbornness of George III. gave us 
this noblest of nations. We should never have 
declared independence if we had not been goaded 
to the point of desperation. George III. was 
wicked, and deserves no credit for what he un- 
wittingly and unwillingly accomplished. God 
turned his wicked attempts in a favorable direc- 
tion. He uses either contrary or favorable 
winds to drive on the vessel of his Providence. 

"Then," some one says, "it matters not if I 
am wicked." Yes, it matters much to us ; for, 
while we will be forced to aid in the working 
out of the Lord's beneficent plans, we will not 
be excusable for our conduct, and will have to 
suffer for it. Pharaoh and George III. lost 



152 God Winning Us. 

the credit of a high result, and were miserable 
in their experiences. It is better for us to work 
with God willingly — to work as a child rather 
than a slave. Some one remarks, " If I am 
forced to further God's plans, whether I do well 
or ill, I do God's will." But we are responsible 
for motives, not results. If we do wickedly, we 
do what God forbids and deplores, whether he 
turn them to our and others' good or not. If 
we lift the hammer to strike our neighbor, and 
some one turns our arm so that we drive the 
nail home and accomplish something useful, we 
are as culpable as though we had accomplished 
our intention. 

Pharaoh was not compelled to do what he 
did; the Lord simply turned his evil pur- 
poses to good effect. Wilkes Booth was not 
compelled to murder Lincoln; but, having 
slain him, God bore the weary servant home 
without a moment of conscious suffering, and 
through the tragedy so touched the heart of the 
nation that all souls were cemented and united 
in a common brotherhood. Lincoln did more 
in his death than in his life. Who can subvert 
the plans of the Almighty? The wicked may 
seek to do so, but they will only aid in the 
working out of those plans. They will bring 



Ood Caring For Us. 153 

unhappiness and pain upon themselves; but, 
whether willingly or unwillingly, they will 
serve God's purposes. 

This wonderful law of permissions and of 
overruling Providence is very comforting to 
those who wish to do right. It is the most 
beautiful revelation that has broken upon the 
world. It is very helpful in clearing up mys- 
teries and untangling circumstances. God's 
plans shall come to a grand and successful con- 
clusion ; and men, however brilliant or power- 
ful, can not subvert them. Our little boat, 
driven by winds and covered with tempests and 
darkness, shall find at last the shining and 
peaceful harbor. "If my barque sink, 'tis to 
another sea." 

There is another thought connected with this 
teaching of Divine Providence. The Lord has 
a supreme regard for our future. As the mari- 
ner out on the sea, beating against contrary 
winds, keeps his eye on the compass, and in 
mental vision sees the far-off port and aims for 
it, so the Lord thinks continually of the pur- 
poses he has in view for us, and turns every- 
thing to aid those purposes. We can not see the 
end; he can. I saw a babe lying on its 



154 God Winning Us. 

mother's bosom, borne along on the swift ex- 
press to the city of Boston. It knew not 
whither it came, whither it went, or by what 
means it sped onward. It tossed, and kicked, 
and screamed, and made everybody miserable 
in the car — itself the most unhappy of all ; yet 
it did not alter the course of the train in the 
least. The mother held it tightly to her breast ; 
the trainmen went cheerfully about their duties, 
as though nothing had happened ; and the train 
was making perfect time. It arrived at Knee- 
land Street on the tabulated minute, all on 
board safe and sound. Of course, the infant 
was too young to be responsible ; yet it serves 
as an illustration. What made the infant un- 
happy w r as its unrest. Everything was just 
right, and it was speeding in the right direc- 
tion. Its turbulence did not alter the schedule 
time; it simply made itself and others un- 
happy. The world is filled with people of 
this type, speeding along on the train of the 
Lord's providences. They do not alter any- 
thing by their discontent; they only make 
themselves and others miserable. It is thus that 
God's babes are carried on in the arms of the 
Eternal Goodness. He will do what is best 



God Caring For Us. 155 

for them, however much they murmur or rebel. 
And he is doing what they, if they could see 
the end, would wish. The infant reaches Bos- 
ton on time ; and we shall pass through such 
experiences as are for our best good, whether 
we do it willingly or not, and shall reach our 
journey's end at the appointed hour. Shall we 
go feverish, rebellious, miserable? or shall we 
go trusting and happy ? The great, calm, wise 
Father has us in his embrace, and we shall go 
on whether we will or not. 

Many people are troubled by the seeming 
inequalities of life. They can not tell why 
some are placed in circumstances of wealth ; 
why some are of noble blood, of robust health, 
cradled in comfort, while others struggle with 
every sorrow that human life admits. These 
contemplations turn the hearts of many away 
from God. But we ought to remember that 
the Lord does not regard that which speedily 
passes away, except as it serves the great end in 
view. He looks to our future. He always 
looks to character. He knows what will be 
best in our particular case, and what will make 
us hardiest and thriftiest. If poverty and 
struggle will do it, we shall have poverty and 
struggle. Some plants are better for the frosts, 



156 God Winning Us. 

some are not. If it will be better for us to 
fight, God will not withhold from us that op- 
portunity. Some thrive only on opposition, 
others sink under it. The Lord holds in his 
hands all the winds of circumstance and oppor- 
tunity, and will blow upon us from the direc- 
tion that will carry us onward to the best 
things. If we trust him, we shall go on in 
peace; if we do not trust him, we shall go on 
in turbulence; but we shall go on — nothing will 
alter his plan for us. He gives each what is best. 
We can not believe in a God of love and 
wisdom, and doubt that he will give us wealth, 
health, power, and even royalty, if it would be 
best for us. How can we doubt, when we see 
that people come into these things almost in- 
variably by the providences of the Lord? 
Really, about everything is inherited ; we in- 
herit wealth, health, or the gifts which bring 
these. If a man inherit genius that brings him 
wealth and power, it is only another way of 
saying that he inherits wealth and power. It is 
God who gives men their gifts and faculties by 
which they get on in life. Men inherit health, 
blood, impulse ; they come into an American, 
Chinese, or Hottentot family without any voli- 
tion of their own. And we can not believe in a 



God Caring For Us. 157 

partial God and at the same time believe in a 
good God. 

Whatever gifts we have, whatever wealth 
or power we have, wherever we are placed or 
circumstanced, that must be best for us. If 
God is all-wise and all-loving, it must be so. 
If he had found it best, he could have had 
us born ten thousand years ago as well as 
now. He could have placed us in the family 
of an Astor, or in the royal house of Hanover, 
if he had seen that would be best. If he could 
not, then he is not Omnipotent. If he will not 
do the very best for us, then he is not all-wise 
and all-loving. If we are faithfully and trust- 
ingly doing our part, and lack this or that, it is 
a blessed lack. 

We may say that it is the doings of wicked 
men that make poverty and struggle in the 
earth. Yes ; but if it were not best for us to 
have poverty and struggle, God would overrule 
their designs, or he would have placed us in 
another age, other conditions, other circum- 
stances. While he does not excuse the wrongs 
of men, he uses both the adverse and the genial 
forces to affect his purposes. The pattern of 
his design we view from underneath, and see 
tangled masses of thread and conglomerate 



158 God Winning Us. 

hues, without harmony, order, or beauty. The 
other side, beheld by the eye of God, is glori- 
ously different. 

" Seamy and dark with despair and disaster, 
Turn it, and lo ! the design of the Master. ' ' 

Then the New Church teaches that the world 
is directed by Infinite Love and Infinite Wis- 
dom. All laws, physical and spiritual, are laws 
of love. They could not be otherwise, coming, 
as they do, from the hand of Love and Wis- 
dom. Sorrow arises from subverting them; all 
trouble arises from the wrong uses of some- 
thing good. Honey is to be eaten, and is agree- 
able to the palate and nutritious to the stomach ; 
but, placed in the eye, it becomes a source of 
pain and injury. Every sorrow arises from the 
ignorant or wilful breaking of laws. It may 
be we are suffering from the indiscretions of 
our ancestors ; diseases are sent down the stream 
of heredity, inflicting woes upon the innocent. 
Laws are all beneficent, and when the race obeys 
them, sorrow and suffering shall flee away for- 
ever. The Lord guides every soul with ten- 
derest mercy; in our darkest and guiltiest 
moments he permits only that which will be 
best for us. Whether pain or pleasure, it is 



God Caring For Us. 159 

Love that allows it. It is the chisel and the 
sandpaper cutting and polishing, but ever beau- 
tifying. Our very agonies will contribute to 
our happiness and perfection ; every breeze, 
whether it be hurricane or zephyr, shall swell 
the sails that bear us into port. 




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Light on the Problems of Life and Death 

BY 

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Kindly Light In Prayer and Praise 

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Price, 60 cents ; 8 cents postage. 



WHAT SOME OF ITS READERS SAY OF IT. 

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The Church's One Foundation* 



BY 

REV. B. F. BARRETT. 
Price, 75 cents. 



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was intent mainly on setting forth his ideas concerning the 
heavenly state. Such persons should read this little volume." 

The New Unity says of it : 

" The dedication of this book expresses the spirit of the man 
who preached the sermons. It reads : ' To all God's children, of 
every faith and every creed, and to those also who as yet have 
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"They are simple, direct, and strong expressions of what 
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The Church Union says of it : 

" Swedenborg's position is now well established as one who 
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life of religion is to do good.* 

"Mr. Barrett's sermons are an unfolding and illustration of 
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From Different Points of View. 



Price, 50 cents. 



An English Reviewer says of this book : 

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" This little book not only gives a glimpse of a great soul and 
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religious movements of our times. No one can fully understand 
the new orthodoxy without understanding something of the influ- 
ence of Swedenborg in the modern pulpit ; an influence greater 
and more extended than any man unacquainted with the facts 
is willing to admit/' 

The Church Union says of it : 

" This is at once an interesting sketch of an interesting life 
and a partial exposition of the spiritual truths to the elucidation 
of which the life was ardently consecrated. The Swedenborgian 
philosophy has had many able exponents, but none more able 
or useful than Mr. Barrett. Underneath all his writings (which 
were many and varied) there was one continual purpose — 
namely, to show that Swedenborg never intended or expected 
that his philosophy would become the basis of a new sect, but 
that it would permeate and influence the religious thinking of 
all classes of Christians. It has done so to an extent that can 
not be measured or imagined, and Mr. Barrett's untiring labors 
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and writer to this result/' 

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" It will amply repay any reader who desires acquaintance 
with a beautiful and little understood doctrine, or with a charac- 
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The True Catholicism* 



BY 

B. F. BARRETT. 
Price, 30 cents. 



CONTENTS. 
Different Phases of Divine Truth. II. Basis of Christian Union. 
III. Ancient Ground of Church Fellowship. IV. Believers in 
Tripersonalism. V. Believers in Salvation by Faith Alone. VI. 
Further Illustrations. VII. Believers in Modern Unitarianism. 
VIII. Some may Drink Deadly Things with Impunity. IX. 
Truth not Truth with all its Receivers. X. The Gentiles. XI. 
Unity with Diversity. XII. Catholicism of the Gospel. XIII. 
Truth a Means, not an End. XIV. Conclusion. 



OPINIONS OF SOME OF ITS READERS. 
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great pleasure, and can think of no more forcible expression of 
the effect produced by the reading, than this : / feel lifted up, 
I wish it could be put in the hand and heart of every preacher 
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reaches, I doubt not the next Congress of Churches would urge 
a ' movement all along the line.' M 

A New-Church minister writes : 

" Whoever has been led to think that the real New Church is 
narrow in its spirit, bigoted in its character, or wanting in liv- 
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dom should read the book.'' 



"The Swedenborg Library." 

Complete in 12 volumes, averaging 250 pages each ,• consist- 
ing of choice selections from the writings of Swedenborg topic- 
ally arranged, with a full Table of Contents. The great Swede's 
religious and ethical teachings are here presented in a condensed, 
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ful portrait of the author in Vol. XII, which contains 320 pages. 
The titles of the several volumes are : 

1. Death, Resurrection and the Judgment. 

2. Heaven. 

3. Freedom, Rationality and Catholicity. 

4. Divine Providence and its Laws. 

5. Charity, Faith and Works. 

6. Free-Will, Repentance, Reformation and Regeneration. 

7. Holy Scripture and the Key to its Spiritual Sense. 

8. Creation, Incarnation, Redemption, and the Divine 

Trinity. 

9. Marriage and the Sexes in both Worlds. 

10. The Author's Memorabilia. 

11. The Heavenly Doctrine of the Lord. 

12. Swedenborg ; With a Compend of his Teachings. 

SOME OF ITS RECOMMENDATIONS. 

1st. It gives the substance of Swedenborg's teachings in a com- 
pact form, and in his own words (translated), with references to 
the works whence the extracts are taken. 

2d. It classifies the subjects so as to make it easy for the reader 
to find whatever spiritual instruction he may be seeking. 

3d. It does not interfere with but helps all other enterprises 
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upbuilding of the true Church on earth. 

4th. The volumes are of such a convenient size, that one of 
them may be easily carried in the coat-pocket. 

5th. Any volume of the series makes a beautiful gift-book to 
a friend, or to any seeker after the highest truths. 

6th. Each volume, being complete in itself, may be purchased 
separately when so desired. 

7th. The work is gotten up in a very tasteful style, and the 
series makes a beautiful and valuable addition to any library. 

8th. Last, but not least, of its recommendations, is its cheap- 
ness, — being about half the usual price of similar works. 

Price 50 cents a volume, $5.00 for the set. The twelve 
volumes bound in six [cloth] for $3.25 ; sold only in sets. To 
ministers and theological students $2.50, when ordered from the 
publishers. 

Address SWEDENBORG PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION. 



AS HE IS* 

An Attempt to Set Forth a Rational Religion* 

BY 

REV. EDMUND G. MOBERLY. 



Price, Cloth, 50 cents ; Leatherette, 30 cents. 



A little book filled with life-giving thought, admirably ex- 
pressed and most tastefully put into book form. 

It is written in the interests of no ism whatever, nor for the 
benefit of any one sect, but will amply repay any thoughtful 
reader for the half hour given to its perusal. 



THE PROBLEM OF REFORM. 

BY 

REV. S. C. EBY. 



Price, 50 cents. 



TEMPERANCE LITERATURE. 



The Fruits of the Vine (Paper, 16 cents) 25 

Reply to " The Holy Supper and its Administrating Me- 
diums." By a Deacon 10 

Reply to Deacon's Second Pamphlet (per 100, 25 cents) . .02 
Who is on the Lord's Side ? 10 copies 02 



SWEDENBORG PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION, 

GERMANTOWN, PA. 



NOV 12 1898 



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